Act 1 [a foreshadow]
by Kimberly E Ruth

Empty bedroom

They meet at the rear of his car.
She in a shiny red dress.

A girl watches from upstairs as the light
Illuminates her mother, a brunette,

like a window display.

She thinks is she nervous
She thinks how did it happen

The ground seeps.

She eats her hair like a peanut, waiting

[it’s all natural] she said
slipping her anxious hands below the hem.

In the distance lights flicker like a siren
A radio plays static

An empty window cries
A shutting light.

Origami
by Kimberly Ruth

Fake trees bleeding water
like ticking clocks

and folded napkins.

She said seas sin
or something like it.

The door opened then closed, slowly, the lock carefully turned and put back into its place. Where have you been, she asked. She was on the couch, her head still as a tack. The hospital, he whispered. There was an accident, baby. You smell like lavender, she said. It was a woman. Ran herself into a tree. The rain, he continued. She turned to look at him. Water was dripping down his legs. A puddle at his feet. She stood up to get a rag. She didn’t even know his name, he was saying, and she nodded, placing her hands on his rounded belly.

Squat on the peak, they held hands, with resistance.

I want to kiss you, she said. You know I can’t, baby, a little slack and we’re with the pigs. She looked down. It’s been three months. I want to fuck, she said. It doesn’t seem to bother them he said, pointing to his neighbor. And in this manner they stayed, watching them drop off night after night with the coming of the sun, a map of poached triangles.

There is someplace else
I should be

not here in this seat
not in this town

I look out the rear
view mirror

at a woman with ragged hair
who is walking somewhere,

I assume.

I pass an empty play ground and
turn around.

The sun says some time has passed.

The woman with ragged hair
is still pacing

and the radio says
outbound trains are running two hours

behind schedule.

*a response to Billy Collin’s Aimless Love

The best kind of love, he wrote

was that without recompose, without

gifts, or unkind words,

without silence

on the telephone:

a mouse carcass, a wren,

a chestnut.

I continue reading under a confused fan,

a dim light. He breathes, unaware.

Things like that, he argues

they can’t slam doors or pack their lives into boxes

and leave

there is no waiting

no broken arrows

Aimless love, he called it,

desirable, he makes it sound,

yet,

I look at him and his stomach,

pulsing

slowly

He is not a chestnut, I think,

yet,

he spoke:

I’m cold

I know, I replied.

*Title appropriated from Albert Einstein’s essay “On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” which introduced his theory of special relativity.

CONSEQUENCE ONE

It is titled War Execution. His face is contorted with one eye shut and the other only half- so, like a broken window stuck ajar, yet he stands straight, shoulders down, hands behind his back. If they are tied, I do not know. He is young, in his twenties, maybe, and a gun is pressed against his head. FLASH. Capture iniquity. FLASH. Expose truth. FLASH.

 The moment the shutter is released: visible light is reflected from the objects in the camera’s field of view: an objective moment of brutality

 until a man with a red, white, and blue pin breathes a sigh of relief.

CONSEQUENCE TWO

 What if it were now, as they thought it was then,

when the earth was still flat and you

could walk around barefoot, with unpolished

toes and teased hair. But, the force is too strong,

when the yellow lines become invisible and

when there is no place beautiful left to go,

that she who stands still  will fall

faster than she who just came back

from getting her hair cut.

You sit there smirking

marinating yourself in declarations of truth

Beings of proof that hate breeds hate

bang their heads against walls and ask

why.

How

could

you

sleep with my husband,

Mom?

A crowd growls

They mock her

ask her

and chant

show us your teeth

show us your teeth

We are divided like embryonic cells

You display our deranged society, Jerry

with us at the center

us the loveless who point and laugh

at real men in love

with inflatable dolls

and horses

women with their daughters’ husbands

and teeth like a fence

We are not cells but the widow spider’s spun

web

like married first cousins,

dysfunctionally connected.

Like inside a pig’s stomach, it was dark:

a scene illuminated only

by what looked like a dilapidated saint

broken and buzzing an awkward

buzz.

I stepped closer

to get a better look and maybe feel or

touch or be touched by this flashlight

of a thing

but she flinched,

quivering like an unmade

bed.

I stepped back

showing her my armless hands

knowing here, in this intestinal trench,

such a thing it makes no difference.

On my way home from work I heard a man say it doesn’t matter, sleep is the same wherever you do it, and I thought, yeah, for the moment. I remember the sun was strong and my eyes hurt like the time in elementary school when we were given cards to view the sun. Don’t look directly into it, she said, unless you want to burn a hole in your eye. I didn’t. Actually, that is a lie. I never looked at a card to view the sun. I never even stood outside an elementary school. It must have been something I saw on TV once, or a momentary dream, walking home from work. That thing will burn a hole in your brain, she used to say.