Calle de los Hijos
When I asked where the jarred monkey head came from, Dan said, ohhh, just from a magician friend of mine. There’s a nice garden out back, brass bed and a black cat, but there’s also a vulture claw, some petrified lizards, and a perfect alligator skull holding space between Heart of Darkness and Huck Finn. His memory’s terrible, so he reads books again and again, posts his scrawled reminders in every room: 1. cat food 2. left breast too small: re-draw 3. chiropractor noon on tues. Reminds me twice to mow, water the morning glories and the marijuana, calls from Portland to double-check. When I shuffle to the bathroom at night, I dodge a child-sized skeleton, iron mannequins, oil paintings of nude women, one of which is me, with silk and lace and cellophane-covered faces and gold-leaf haloes that glow in the dark, and I swear their shadows should amount to piles of clothes, but they don’t. Even in daylight, I tiptoe.
Heidi Neff is a poetess and art model living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A recent graduate of the BA English program at The University of New Mexico, she plans to promptly return to one of her favorite activities: wandering the world collecting rocks, spices, and stories. She is currently working on a book of visual poetry. This is her first poetry publication.