“The future is a past that has not yet come to pass. Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself?” –Clarice Lispector
The hollow monotony vibrates through porous mouths. Intoxication of sky lodges its devouring yawn between humans and me. Cigarettes blind the muttering gestures of chronic language. Overdressed meals and hearsay crumble their butts in the ashtray. I flaunt idle. Eyes vast and explosive as Ukraine.
Raging internal desire emanates from Mother’s wheelchair on the balcony. Particles of her are unable to spark synapses of flames she used to implode. My power basks in solitude. Can a story parch a death? Mother is bathed in my spellbound pallor of promise. I detonate her with stories, plays, endings obese with resurrection.
Mother dies. I shut-up. A pain of shriveled control affronts and tags me as a charlatan. I believe in my spindled prose. My childhood is huge and envelopes even the most passive semen from extended brethren. ‘Fresh flesh’ they pin me. Haughty cousins, uncles raw with the junk of their sewage take me as their inheritance.
Vague reality is rudderless past lives. My power lies in lack of memories and visions.
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.