Donuts for Dinner, Too Much to be True
There is wind at the door tonight, pushing leaves and rain, buckling the sway of the only entrance to my home. It’s a rush in my head. My mother, arms akimbo and wishing to whip me with her apron strings, purse strings, heart strings, strings in her hair (no bathing), endures countless years of decadence. The rain pushes again. Her tears slash the glass. So sorry, so sorry, too bad. My brother and I revolt in our ‘20’s, rebellion left over from our teens, our disobedience no longer fashionable. Who says we can’t have donuts for dinner? Who says our sins break God’s back like the last whack of a dinosaur tail? “The check is in the mail,” Mom says, and means it, regardless of the mail carrier’s mistake and seven years. She could have told the truth, could have mailed herself into space like a letter to Santa Claus, riding on the federal wings of lost promises. Sky water warps the pane—I can’t look, for the window is dark and I am alone and starving. Old, bumbling flies stutter across the glass, too many to worry about, too much to wonder (aghast) at their awful portents. But the end, already near and solemn, is a slim china vase in which I still wait, still carry hope.
The Hunger Artists
Sometimes people call us “starving artists” or “starving writers.” There is no difference between the two when it comes to the yowling empty stomach. We skip breakfast to draw or compose poetry. We skip lunch because soup and sandwiches are a mere, fleeting fantasy. And we only allow ourselves one Cheeto for dinner, gazing longingly at the little yellow curl so lonely on the plate. No wonder still lifes are such a popular subject! Voluptuous bowls of fruit simmering in priceless afternoon light, the hint of a ripeness so juicy it swims through our vision—we paint our food so it will sustain us long after the paint dries. Or we write of hunger as that vast, animal need consumes us, our bellies groaning with verisimilitude. Or we try eating our words—depending on the specific expletives we use, we could be full for a long time.
Snow Day
Snow lies on branches like toothpaste on a corresponding brush, the heft of ice crystals hanging from twigs and eaves. In the existential being of morning and breathing, light seeps through cracks in gray sky. Ice overcomes. Cold protracts and contracts and retracts and subtracts—the mercury falls as low as it will go. Then the shovels come out. Everywhere is the sound of their mournful scraping—metal on cement, grating against the crust. Backs break under the strain, ropey arms stretched taut, shaking in fatigue’s tight vibrations. Down the street, a house collapses, roof doomed by water’s weight. The driven flakes rise in feet, cave in the banks of the frozen river. It is, some say, quite beautiful
Zan Bockes is a direct descendant of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and revelry. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. Her fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Writers and Their Notebooks, Visions International, Out of Our, Cutbank and Phantasmagoria, and she has had four nominations for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry collection, Caught in Passing, is forthcoming from Turning Point Press.