messager:
if i hung a doll on the wall with a body part and wrote under it, overandoverandover, the same words, i wonder what it would be?
hers, the one that is say, “protectionprotectionprotectionprotection” until the words and her voice dry up like a well in a drought, has someone’s hand on her chest. the only time someone’s hand has looked like that on my chest was when we were walking late at night or early in the morning, wading past and through a sea of armchairs lined up for miles along the vardar river, meandering towards the old stone bridge that my mother used to pretend was made of rubies and yellow diamonds.
it was only a cat in the bushes by the dirt path to the bus stop, but the red bus with the white stripe scared it and she scared him because he would kill anyone that hurt me, and his hand shot out across me, as if the few bones of his wrist could keep away knives or fists or even just eyes.
but the world is in a palm and his was flat against the night instead of against me.
someone’s palm is flat against messager’s doll’s chest.
i would hang her by the back of her neck where the sides of her throat grow into her shoulders and on her chest would limpidly hang a photograph of someone’s collarbone, white and protruding and like the moon if the moon weren’t so jovial and plump, a photograph frame in brown sugar, like the glasses at fancy dinners, their rims crusted in crystals.
and i’m not telling you what the dark green crayon underneath her legs would say.
mary jo bang and gjertrud schnackenberg are brilliant. especially when they say things like:
“or vision, thrown on an empty mirror, and there you were?” or “in the dining room they would crumple over the table like paper angels if anyone raised an eyebrow.” or “a child’s prison for butterflies” or “a change of clothes? the dream master asked” or “and once, the household clocks passing the news of ‘Five’ from room to room, when she stood up to put away the cards and cold tea, he, wishing he could keep her there with him, thought to detain her with interrogations, and, sinking back…began by asking her, Where is the snow from?”
today the snow outside my window is climbing up the thin glass, poking its fingers inside maybe to wave or maybe to laugh or maybe to say, “leave your cold mint tea and
