The Bookends Review

Click: the door is locked
His mind unlocked
Watch him through the spyhole
Scratching at his skin
Biting his lips till they bleed
The only way he can feel
The only way to stay real
In the white room.

He knows he’s being watched
But he needs that prying eye
To stop himself imploding
To cling to outside things
No need for any mirrors
In this gaping space of ice
The shining happens inside him
In the white room.…

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Having spent 25 years running a quarter-scale steam engine, I’m only a tiny bit shocked to find myself sitting in one, steam rising from the hot boiler, my hand on the brake, ready to release it.

I try to piece together why I’m here, hard due to my failing memory—part of the natural progression they say, which is no comfort, believe me. The black, belching and drifting coal smoke, choking to most, is more nostalgic to me than disturbing.

This is not the first time I’ve forgotten where I am and why. I used to panic, running aimlessly, calling for help. But I’ve now come to treat it, after a moment’s fear, like a chronic sleepwalker must feel upon waking. All the other times, however, I was somewhere on the nursing home grounds, often looking for my wife, Janet, who nurses remind me has passed away.…

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I wandered the streets in a haze. For the first time in many months I moved about directionless, and without idea of where to find a cause to travel. So I simply moved, passing under street lights and swimming in the cold haze of night between their islands of effervescence. I glided through Shibuya, through Akihabara, and eventually into Minato. All the while awaiting a reason to move, a definable destination. Finally, I reached the Minato train station.

It was then that I saw the woman.

She had been standing by one of the pillars outside the terminal. She was dressed quite smartly, with a long brown coat opened to reveal a form fitting office skirt and a little crossover tie. She looked like she had dropped straight out of an eighties flick about some aspiring young girl who goes to the big city and meets the man of her dreams.…

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I am an hourglass
constantly turned
before time is through

– Christiana Doucette

Author’s Note: “Life’s Line” was written during one of those life moments where everything turns on its head. The expected does not happen. Instead, life suddenly reorients around a new, uncomfortable normal. The time one thought one had, runs through the fingers the wrong direction, and there is somehow less, or more. Always something in place of what one thought one would have.…

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I.
They call me a monster,
ignoring the true Frankenstein,
who crafted me
from stitched sinews and mismatched
skin and lopsided limbs—
an amalgamation of forgotten scraps—
he who activated my heart with a
defibrillator,
then abandoned me,
fearful
of his own creation.

II.
They call me a monster,
screaming when I approach
or murmuring when I leave.
Flinging darted glances
as I stand in a grocery store line,
holding a birthday cake with one candle.
Don’t they know
this skin was not chosen?…

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“Drinking drivers/Nothing worse/They put the quart/before the hearse/
Burma-Shave” Series of roadside signs by Burma Shave, 1950s

In the driveway sat the 1950 Buick Roadmaster Estate Station Wagon, its toothy grille like an angry steel smile, proud of its dynaflow automatic transmission, and wooden body side panels. The back of the car was packed with suitcases for a trip to my grandmother’s funeral five-hundred miles away. Dad was intent on making the trip there in one day, go to the service, and return home the following morning, so we could, as he put it, “get it over with.” When it was time to get in the car, my mother and father sat on the front bench seat and my little sister, older brother and I sat in back.…

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My daddy didn’t teach me how to hold my keys between my knuckles or scare off a cat-caller. Coming from the country, I never had to worry about them; strange men didn’t make a habit of lurking out in our woods. We did have chickens, though, and they were high on the menu for a lot of mean critters. So, my daddy saw it fit that my self defense lessons consisted of which color of bear to run from, which snake bites will send you to the hospital, and how to fight off a coyote.

Thumb in the eye, grab the muzzle, knee on the throat.

Once I loaded my life into a u-haul, I didn’t think I’d need those lessons anymore. But I was gonna have to learn all the standard stuff that girls my age had years of practice with– how to use pepper spray and not get it in your eyes, how to break free when someone grabs you from behind, that you need to yell “fire” instead of “ help” when someone assaults you.…

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