Next Stop: Hot Jobs

Having just lost her chimney—sweep job to the stars,
Flaxie sighs and rings her ears—she's coming off dope
and unhappy—too much soot, pouches of diamonds
and secrets, someone's remains untold to journals,
that's what made ugly options work for Flaxie. That,
and the fact she can't get sick—she's a fairy.
She know electricians who've watched women move
their bottoms more than fix a socket. Blackened fingers
shook for each pencil skirt that wound their way. Flaxie
Char remembers the First Shower after one left,
sockets shorted as she reached for a towel, wasn't
it beautiful? I've been this close to death, she thought
dramatically, holding her spent finger to her chest.
All that purple and impulse—what discos should be,
or tombs.

Banjo Bathos

Flaxie-I'm in, I'm out, I miss my friend. I'm scared
to death and without your wings, who comes to visit?
You've felt the lone out here, the trees still whistle your
Momma's songs—Susannah, Dinah and the like, always
those girls crying or cleaning. I'm needle pointing
a pillow. One pillow...who are we kidding?
I've a bedload ready for the taking. I'm on
creeping purple vines this month, last month was moths.
I've the dream again, the boy with the football head-
spongy and floppy and all over the place. You-
you and her—supposed to do something, but his cheeks
got red and redder and you let him go. We don't know
where, but you hopped over the rocks in someone's garden.
Just come out here, will you? I've got a flue for your
magic touch.

The Organ Recipe

She was more or less alive when she was nine,
her father stopped carving soapstone figures to begin
etching the insides of spent lights. His patterns were
like icing, and soon he stopped coming up to eat.
After he chewed a light bulb, the doctors said his throat
looked like an etching but red, lacy. Gone from
the ambulance, he disappeared. When Flaxie mentioned
her father, she saw all the children in the world
behind her mother's graying eyes. I know, he told
me a long time ago. Flaxie wakes every day to something on her tongue—a violet
then a robin's egg, but today she pulled a piece
of sand-washed glass. With Icarus in the family line,
he'll crash down any day, oblivious. Fairies don't
dissipate.

It Sure Is

A tutu would have really covered her ass
better than this ridiculous toga, but who
was she to argue with a queen diva in a
Roman phase? She tugs her sheet, snaps her cochlea,
rocks inside for a moment like the Boardwalk
Ferris wheel. Unpleasant, she thinks, urps something pink
into her cup. Mother, this sure is something else.
She hates wizarding lingo, but hates even more her
spinning ears. Flaxie cracked her gum and fell—balance
only an option without wings. Her mother sat
in a chair once she heard the screaming whenever
she cooked. Vegetable lives—Flaxie snorted. In this
world, no one makes it without losing it, voices,
insides coming out. She knows hers are starting
to work.