EXCERPTS

FRIEDA HUGHES' MOTHER IS IN THE BATHTUB AGAIN

And behind her shut lids the impetuous hooves
of barefooted children all march through the halls
of the latex balloons. The sound they make
when you bite them is alarming enough to do it
again, Frieda thinks, as she puts one in the baby's
fist. Frieda knows her mother's legs are the longest, palest
fish. When Frieda knocks, she ignores it; when Frieda's
small hand twists the knob, she says Someone's in here
already like she won't be coming out. Making a plan
is not the same as carrying it through; a fever can turn
as green as a bruise. Frieda? Every image comes to her
now like a kicked ear in the morning. Is that you out there
listening? When children grow quiet, there's reason to suspect
they've hurt themselves on purpose, or run out the front door
and into the street. Knock if you're listening so I know that
you're there. Frieda saw her parents kissing once behind a door
frame and she pinched Nicholas just because she could. Frieda
is there but she does not knock; she holds her breath;
her mother listens for the labor of it. This illness, all season;
the panic of autumn surrendered to a taut wintered dawn.
Frieda has her ear against the door. Sometimes she thinks
she won't be able to leave, but better to leave than to stay and
be forgotten. Listen, this is a knock. This soap is white when you
throw it. This is the sound of the tepid water when she stands. Frieda.
Come in if you're coming. When Frieda gets the door to open, her
mother is there, counting the small mercies of the last and final hours.

-Leigh Stein

Marie Magda

Curt Prussian lips said small prayers as nimble ten-year-old fingers lit candles. The formality of a church, reverent as though the prayers spoken here were designed for a god, but instead of a nude figure on a cross, Marie Magda aligned her drowsy eyes to her mantel and the carefully posed portraits of Duse and those hands, whose readiness of expression she was appealing. Candles arranged around fraying post-cards from a local shop, wax dripping on a make-shift altar to a make-shift saint. Magdala hadn't the inkling that she was changing, becoming Lily Marlene, a death to the quiet Marie Magda, too young to exactly understand how her low prayers were fashioning a magic, cloning an essence, imbuing the small, severe German girl with a genderless allure that would make her inescapable, and a certainty of purpose she could only have stolen.

At seventeen Lily Marlene discovered a certain romantic actress whose open sentimentality was the antithesis of her solid sensibilities. She sent the actress cakes filled with fresh cream, she serenaded her with her violin and sang to her suggestively in her duskiest voice. The actress invited Lily into her home for breakfast, feeding the girl on eggs, toast and sausage, but the girl closed like an oyster with a pearl. Suddenly growing awkward, losing her ferocity, she ran home without saying goodbye, but where Lily became sullen and withdrawn with this perceived rejection, Marlene would never allow herself to be made a fool. From then on, she would only be sung about, never again the singer.

Through conductivity, black magic, and kleigs, she was born, cigarette in hand, tuxedo fluttering from her suitcase, she ran to catch the first day's train to Berlin, watching her small, northern town fall off the horizon. She puffed her cigarette and blew smoke at the cold home she was leaving behind.

- Alexis Dei Santi

Fourth Elegy

The lake is
a secret
under snow,
tracks from skis
and the suddenly
stopped
tracks of a child.

- Katherine Laplant