June 14, 1968
To: Dad
From: Uncle Sal
Hello again Mister Shackled Spectacles,
Old war injuries have nothing on marrying two cracked nuts. When do we set out the goddamn party bowl? The wife is no more roses than the crocheted toilet seat covers her mother sent us for Christmas. It’s a shade of red blistering with the stench of the wife’s crotch. You’ve lived that odor, Catholic boy. Bloody women deflate the appetite. And Grandma Irish cabbage spits on any Jew’s holiday, especially Hannukah. She should be fumigated as well. Stinks of mothballs and Saviors. Nothing more aggravating than a wilted wife guided by her stained-glass brood.
Yes, I read your last letter. Hysteria is a reminder to keep up the medication. Don’t let the wife in on how many. Crush them up and serve in whatever beverage the wife is kin to. Mine stains with a nice Brandy. Puts her to sleep like the ghost of me hauling out trashcans. You’ll learn. The recipe for an alluring woman is just the right cocktail. Ambushed by muted memory. She is all you anticipated in bound whipping posts and just the right thrust.
Brother. Let her swallow the you that is forgotten. Let her swallow your monster grunts and groans, instead of creamed onto toilet paper after she passes out.
Sending you the last letter I signed for the wife. They have a date set for her. Electro-Convulsive Therapy. It’s the tattoo of the future. Welcome to the wifedom of vacancy.
Don’t climb the stairs in the dark, brother,
Uncle Sal
Meg Tuite is author of a novel-in-stories, Domestic Apparition, a short story collection, Bound By Blue, and won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry award for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging, as well as five chapbooks of short fiction, flash, and poetic prose. She teaches at Santa Fe Community College, is a senior editor at Connotation Press, an associate editor at Narrative Magazine, fiction editor here at Bending Genres Journal, and editor of eight anthologies. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines, over fifteen anthologies, nominated nine times for the Pushcart Prize, five-time Glimmer Train finalist, placed 3rd in Bristol Prize, and Gertrude Stein award finalist. Her blog: http://megtuite.com.