
Wine and Doorbells
Illustrations from Neon Eulogy, by Keith McKellarA winner of the 2011 Downtown Eastside Writers' Jamboree Writing Contest.
She was hiding in a bag of clothespins, Tall as a hammered nail, and slightly rusty. She was ready to hang love boutique panties from the corners of her sprung wooden toes. She wanted the ice. The cool of the clutch. The gathering of princess possessions in the fist of a threesome. Thirty fingers thirsty to taste what she had in the bag. What she was holding.
Her colouring book divorce had smeared past its outlines. She felt out-of-register, like a Warhol portrait, or the sardonic, oral meltdown of Robert Smith’s smile. Wine and doorbells. Something to sip on. Something to push. She needed that.
Isn’t it true that a thumping tire means it’s deflated, flat? She felt like that too. Obliged to carry the beat in rotating conversation When what she really needed was emergency road repair. Someone to fix her predicament. Strong hands on a round of rubber.
I am forgetting my son, and the dog bolted to my ex-husband’s shoe. I am sliding in woollen slippers down a Varathane hallway. I am thinking of you.
Are my breasts the serious faces you vowed they would become? They never smiled for you, and now they stick their tongues out, Mocking you, like cherries out of reach on a high, fecund tree.
I suppose, someday, these mercury nights will seem benign as mollusks simpering in their poisonous shells. Let us crack calcium knuckles and roll up our sleeves. Dig in to the armoured meat of underwater wombs. Sucking them down in one, salty gulp.