Pisces: The Artist Poses His Muse Before a Goldfish Bowl by Kathryn Kulpa
He never tells me to smile. He says he likes me best for my perfect blankness. Once he painted my eyes. Only my eyes. Floating like olives in a glass jar.
He never tells me to smile. He says he likes me best for my perfect blankness. Once he painted my eyes. Only my eyes. Floating like olives in a glass jar.
Jessie wakes to the smell of manure being spread. Every day. Or maybe only growing season, but it feels like every day. When her father and brothers come in from the fields and Ma has one of her sick headaches, it’s Jessie who washes their clothes, pounding dirt and dung out of stiff, worn denim, watching her hands grow cracked and red, and thinking about death.
Midnight, and Frank is burying spoons again. He doesn’t know I dig them up, hours later, after I’ve put him in bed with his pills and sippy cup, after I’ve checked under the bed for CIA agents, opened the closet door to show him no Russians are hiding there.