Kristine Snodgrass

Poor Rebecca’s Almanac

This year you will have no light. You will drop that piece of lemon pie on your paper and remain uncautious. We are seemingly pillaged and filtered. Our husbands drink to remain married to the moon and we sit quietly and seduce the could-have-beens and therefores. How many of us will die this year? How many will be left salient as a plague? Sit down pie-snatcher and eaves-dropper because I am telling you something important. No anger. Just letting you know that there is going to be a photo finish and we are still praying for revelations and flight plans. Hussy and twit. The future is full of shopping bags and glass thrones. We sing, sit with me. It goes like this.

I’m so tired.
I feel sick.
I don’t want to.

So I say let down your hair. Peel the dead skin from your face and look up.

There is an angel in the way.
There is a year of discovery coming.
Millions before you.

We read the tiny hairs and line on our necks like sentences. We play games on the floor and cut shapes out of pie dough before devouring our young. We are left alone at the most incomprehensible times. Count your wrong doings and blood cells. What have you left? I want to sit primordial and recount my wigwams. How many wampum did you find today? What has the beach to offer a young girl? This fraternal star sits on me. At night I wash it like a cake pan, gently and without malice. I am talking to you darlings. All of you.

Here goes the song of desolation again.
Wheel me out to the curb.
I am old and no one loves me.
I am useless.

There is a reason why tampons are so expensive. We are rushed to judgment on everything. Such anemia for the pale world. Such random heartening. Who am I in love with? A man?

I am so tired.
I am sick.
I don’t want to.

I remain cracked and plagued by indifference.

Susan is Fabulous

But she is an alcoholic. I am trying to come to terms with this but there are too many movies that I have missed all year.

Sasha is bemoaning her job and no one looks forward to using a fresh ballpoint like I do.

There are so many addictions I want to tell Sadie about. The one her father has, the one her best friend has.

I want to scoop them all up () into a voile sheet and bless them.

Bless you.

I will give them a list of the containments holding them in like geodesic domes.

( ) ( )

We are not always irradiant beings, Shar. We sit in light defused rooms and wait for the opening credits.

No previews please. Run, Sally, Run.

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