Eve Edits

I want to live in the Garden of Eden with a different guy, not Adam.

A guy that puts me first. Maybe, I create him; maybe his name is Freddie.

I want the soil to be alive with earthworms, not snakes; the trees abundant

with fruit, but you guessed it, no apples. No good or evil, just knowledge.

I want another chance at paradise, to be naked, day and night, to be one flesh

with Freddie, forever honeymoon, forever young, no death, no devil, no god.

Just beauty, and green vegetables, blooming plants and rivers. And, goats

and rabbits, weasels and bats. No warnings or sin, just discovery. And peace.

And love, definitely, love.

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There Are No Dogs on Mars

Photographs show there are rocks that look like humanoids/upright alien beings/ a rat/ a shoe/ a golden web/ perhaps a gate, perhaps a passage to an underground world/ rocks that look like faces in crevices/ a vase, an urn/ an ancient coin/a ferret, helmet, hard hat/ rocks that look like fossilized frog/ a crab/ skeletal remains/skulls/a traffic light/spaceship debris/ pyramids/ fungi/ rocks that look like a hand with long fingernails/ a large spoon/
a lizard, a turtle/ a coffin, a ball.

There are no dogs on Mars, not even rocks that look like dogs. Green skies, pink skies,
blue sunsets. Volcanoes, lava-tubes, desert/dust storms. (Think Utah) Sand, that through the white balancing filter of the camera looks blue, like rippling waves of water. But there is no water on the Red Planet, which. without the camera filters, is beige, like Cath’s Mum’s kitchen. There’s ice in the craters, permafrost beneath the soil, ancient dried-up lakebeds, dried-up rivers and gullies. Cracked clay, striated mountains of rock that take the shape of Earth’s familiars, however, there are no dogs.

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Clown Baby Names (in alphabetical order)

after Gerry LaFemina

Ah-Choo
Buttons
Clarabelle
Dimples
Emmett
Freckles
Giggles
Happy
Imogene
Jingles
Krusty
Lala
Minnie
Noodles
Oddball
Pickles
Quigley
Ruffles
Sunshine
Tipsy
Unique
Viagra
Whoopie
Xanadu
Yoyo
Zany

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Little Things Leftover, So Many Years Later

I was the Bride of Frankenstein
lightening-white streaks, black wig, interior wire frame for height and shape

We were married then
Just moved into the new house on Crystal, perfect for entertaining & cooking

It was the first adult Halloween party
we’d hosted together for family and friends, costumes were not optional

The day after trick-or-treat, it’s my birthday
a leftover witch, my mother used to say, so I had bought myself a ghoulish cake

We’d argued the week before about his costume
Larry agreed to be Frankenstein; I had bought the green make-up, cut-up old black pants

But he really, really wanted to be a baseball player
which is really, really what he had wanted to be in real life, since he was a kid, his dream

My brother was The Werewolf
amazing brown fur on his face, neck, chest, arms, hands, an ascot and pink polo

There was a Proctologist, a Nun, Little Bo Beep
Superman, The Grim Reaper, a Witch, The Devil, Morticia and Gomez Addams

The Bride of Frankenstein
and a Royals Baseball Player, wooden bat in hand

I forgive you now, Larry
so many years later, for not being the kind of monster that I needed you to be.

Photo credit: Kelly Paxton

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Purchase SPONTANEOUS by Victoria Dym