Playing with Spirit by Sherisse
There were spirits in the house. All around, you said. The doctor was called in. They gave you little pills in big bottles. Your hair fell out. You were still beautiful.
Or, perhaps if you had come to me as a woman...
I don't know what the deal is with the ligaments, tendons, or the lemon in the water. It hurts. It hurts very much when I use the semi-colon. There's space between the land and us and it's all right here.
Words are for spirits. Grandmothers. Hair pins. Cervical spine.
You went there and were so very pretty. In the interim. Dot, dash, delicate as a furry lick. Fox.
Come again, spirit, to the palm of a hand. Break into pieces, break, break, break into nothingness before the curl of goodbye. Pin me to that moment.
Spirit is for romance. Music in the hollow of the contractor or the silence at the other end of an e-mail. Discussion. Thursday, then.
Items: font, air, follicle. Spirit is for muse. Spirit is for banal and bendy truths. So ticklish, in your grip. Hello again, hello.
I could go on like that for strings. Long elbow-bends. Into regret and asterisks. Into such goof. Lend me the play and in springtime I will wear it.
Rheumatoid ladybug. All up my sleeve.
Where does breath go? I'm wanty for white space and un-editing.
A man is at home, turning carrots into soup.
***
Top of the Stares by Alan
To walk into a room and. The dipoff led to a drop that was about. She had no care for stairs, but that was the only way to. Look, I’m not telling you to, yet. Instead of a flashlight, he flashed some form of.
It was a haunting, this. We are told we meet all manner of people when. We are told not to deny them and then. Follow the middle way as stuff arises in. If this sounds familiar, it is because. Searching these dark rooms for traces, for. Wisdom, the voice, its echo – a family unit since. I, by.
It is in the story that we will finally begin although. We will read and reread what has been written so as. The top of the stares, another. Should the height dislocate you, find footing beside. We must not look down or up, only. If fonts could speak, what conversations throughout. What conversations against and within. Everyone is partial sometimes over.
***
Wind by Lyle
Vitex trees curved under the insistence of the wind outside the window that day that we first met. And again on our last meeting. Neither of us doubted that it would end, but the wind — so insistent, so hegemonic — both times! That was something to dwell upon. The way it picked through the leaved while forcing to inflection boney limbs. That we were in a hollowed out whiskey tank hardly crosses my mind — the dim whiskey glow of filament bulbs. That crystalline glint in your eyes as we talked to death, us. I just remember that wind, the wind up and release. It’s windy now, you know. You don’t know — insensible as you are in the wrinkles of my brain. I believe also that there are gusts there that occasionally blow you about like an empty beer can. But the wind doesn’t blow the wind — that at least is a constant. If there was nothing to blow around, what difference the wind? How you used to complain about my complaining about the wind! Remember? That IS the wind, blowing unto itself. You are no longer you. You have been blown ragged, the cracks in your face filled with sand. The tank, as we entered, said SPIRITS above the entrance. I remember that. But now I remember the wind instead of you.
***
Spark Joy by Johanna
Once the Konmari had taken over, there was little she could do to release it, but to clean. From every dark cabinet corner, she wiped, dusted, swept and whistled away the accumulation of years of solitude. She had lived in her house for so long that some corners had been forgotten. She found a shard of sea glass in the bottom of the drawer where she kept her playing cards and had no recollection of its origin. She held it loosely in her palms and focused all of her attention toward it. She let go of any reason that might seek to supersede her intuition and decided that, yes, this miscellaneous shard of sea glass did spark joy.
In the far recesses of her linen closet, she found her childhood doll, Mimsy, the one with the missing eye, the one she held onto since childhood, hauling it from apartment to apartment, wrapped in tissue paper. She held it quietly and to her surprise discovered there was no joy. She let the doll go. Someone else could love it more. She did not cry. In fact, she felt relief, amazing relief. She felt more encouraged than ever to complete her task. The Konmari spirit was strong in her.
No corner could hide from her cleansing hand. For every shelf, cabinet and niche she tidied, another would appear—darker, dustier and more crowded than the last.
And when she was done, she sat in the quiet and waited. The whole house felt light enough to drift aloft into the ether, to release her of all her earthly burdens. She waited three days before she began again. The Konmari spirit never rests.
***
Hit On by Bill
Robert Cawling thought he saw the shape of his dream inside. He took a step and as his foot touched down he felt a spark in the sole of his foot. He wanted to stop but he took another step before he could help it and his other foot landed hard and echoed along inside. Now he tried to stop again and could not, his leg moving heavy and slow it lifted itself and came down a step higher with great noise like two stones punched together. And again his leg moved though he could barely flex it it had grown so stiff and solid.
