April Bradley
A collage review of Christopher Allen’s Other Household Toxins by April Bradley (in author Allen’s own words)
Waves like they fathered the tides: “My world is not broken. My world is not broken.” Freaks to Lynn are portents, stunned by the big dumb beauty of men roaring at a saint just now deciding to be a girl. You can too. “It’s human to want to be the most beautiful thing on earth…” Like girl guy girl guy girl guy with the galloping of the train. I wonder if he can hear me losing my mind. In the voice of Sally Field playing Sybil playing Sid, Sorrow was almost always ironic in its grandeur and spleen: it was so green; it blossomed and thrived. I quote sitcoms. I need my meds. “Imagine…a dress spun from sugar.”— “So much can go wrong in a life,” Then something cums in my brain and spiders shiny like tinsel from synapsis to synapsis to synapsis. I secret my new version of the past away, under branches low and cool like arms. There must be pain here, yeasty and tannic, to swish around in my mouth, parse and spit out. “When they love you,” he said, “do they eat you? Alive?”
April Bradley lives with her family on the Connecticut shoreline near New Haven. Find her online at aprilbradley.net and on Twitter at @april_bradley.