On the theme of Life Cycle
WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING SOMETHING ELSE
I was a cluster of cells, a zeigot, a would-be zeitgeist screwed into her guts. She had a tender mouth, an eye for Maiden’s Blush. A borrowed Dart, just the two of us. There’s always someone who wants to unmanifest things for unmarried girls. I was conjured with Joe Cocker records and a raft of Southern Comfort on a Mississippi party barge nearly on the rocks, I am here to say forgetting is to gone-away like caboose to late-night train. On the phone the nurse said the clinic was unmarked that she ought to look for a yellow VW beetle. Once I caught a ladybug in my hands, legs so small they felt like whispered love. Maybe she pulled in, pulled off one mitten. Maybe she pressed the cigarette lighter, wanting smoke, the burn of something sure. Hand on a Winston, mind on her baby brother. The size of his pinkie when he was born. I don’t know what she said when she drove away. My ears not shelled enough to gather sounds of that world.
Author Biography
A.M. O’Malley lives, writes and works in Portland, OR. You can find her work in The Burnside Review, New Moon Magazine, Ontologica Magazine and numerous zines. For more info go to swiftsparrowswallow.com