Melanie Alberts
Psychometrist v. Arrowhead
Thursday’s circle fills the folding seats: usual lumpy ladies, a granddaughter in braids, my mate Bertie, and me, leading as I do in the power of prayer. The girl’s perhaps ten, a fidgeting doubter, sighing with snide impatience.
“Now then,” I pass my cap to Bertie, “We’ll begin with a demonstration of psychometry, the art of reading the aura of an object. Bertie will blindfold me, then pass the hat into which each of you may deposit one personal item. As I encase an item in my palm, I shall express my impressions, without knowledge of the item’s history or owner.”
A moment passes. Blindfold in place, I reach for the first bauble. A ring, or perhaps a brooch? One was pinned at Dolores’ throat this evening.
In my palm lies the heft of cool stone, full at one end like a pendulum. Images populate my awareness. A coarse wall, off-white and ochre stained. Dead-winter chill, a brown bear rolls on its side, a glossy sac slides out, it licks the writhing pink.
The scene repeats but now a screaming girl pushes against stone with flat hands, squatting over her mother’s own, the baby whisked to the cave’s mouth, water dripping from the walls soothes the girl’s forehead, drained of blood. Bats whip through, shards of stone fly as they lift off, return smelling of brambles— The sound of Bertie’s throat clears as if from under a dozen quilts.
nauseous ocean
oily indifference
stronger bones
have splintered
because of me
Hillary's Pockets
Slippery as unbeaten egg whites the cloth rolls off her shoulders: camel hair, silk lined paisley, sunken buttonholed breasts. The coat checker evaluates its heft, places it on a hanger, hands out a number, smoothes the scarf down a sleeve. Frost lingers about the shoulders as if the owner only just emerged from an unsympathetic landscape. The coat checker checks in more coats.
Finally, from a distant place, music starts, applause crashes out of its box and the checker steps back to the rack, taps its tarnished pedal with her foot.
Sleeves swing outward…249…253…262…even and odd, Chanel No. 5, Opium, Unforgivable. She grasps the camel hair’s collar. In go her arms, hands tucking into the oversized pockets—left side empty, no lipstick, no tissues but in the right, she feels something half eaten, half wrapped in a thin foil, the contents crumbling like whispers swept up by a tired busboy. With fingers to her lips, she smells oats, tastes chocolate and soon the entire treat is in her mouth, tongue dislodging the sticky bits. Somewhere else applause trots about, the cloak room glows fluorescently as
scarves
those elegant nooses
slide closer to the floor