2005 - Vol. 2, Issue 6

Barnston Elementary Panthers repeat as champions. Like they're born for something greater. Ellen's coffee grows cold next to the bamboo chair, strung from the growth of her grandmother's back yard. The citizens had swarmed, petitions signed until she cut it down. The chair is all that remains.

The water heater sounds like someone brushing his teeth, fluid with rough edges. Ellen watches her son sleep, the brows furrowed. In the championship photo he is more at ease. In his sleep she doesn't have to tell him the truth, his dreams tell it for him.

"Just a prick, Leonard." The syringe hovers in front of a menacing hand. The doctor's. "We'll say the Pledge of Allegiance and you'll look at me and we'll focus on the Pledge and not the shot."

We're sitting in five different rooms —
all of us dangling in wait
for the glass slipper of a limb
to be placed on the stump of a missing leg.
Old sockets and stray parts litter corners
too dark to comfort us — some man's foot is used
as a doorstop to leaven the odious weight.
No one says much as saws and grinders
hum through walls; vents fill stifled air
with scents of glue; finely crushed debris
coats our shabby clothes.
Some of us read to cradle our fears,
eyes locked down on the page
like a palm on the stick in a NASCAR race.

the x–rays hang before her,
judge and jury, sentencing her
without defense. the doctor points,
lumbar vertebrae, sacral vertebrae,
his finger slides across the grainy image
nothing is ever black and white
blurs into grey, the edges erased,
swallowed by the darkness
thoracic vertebrae, ribs, sternum
the bones melt into each other
fading into nothingness