Search All Winners

And she then imagines that she sees the flock today because today she is feeling forlorn and abandoned, like a small girl, and doubting and the birds are on a long journey, the journey perhaps of their southern flight for the winter and she also would like to travel, would like some kind of flight, would like an outside of her ideas, the labyrinth of codes and conduct which keeps her close, inside of a closed circuit, and it is only her lover, this carpenter in a Californian city, who had undone the right bands, who has leaked her soul out onto air again, like the small pockets of air beneath the bird-grey wings and lifting them, today, outside of the girl’s window and into the sky.

Some of the prisoners were strung like beef

From the ceilings of their cells. “Gus”

Was led around on a leash. I mean dragged.

Others were ridden like mules. The guards

Were under a tremendous amount of pleasure.

I mean pressure. Pretty disgusting. Not

What you’d expect from Americans.

Just kidding. I’m only talking about people

Having a good time, blowing off steam.

CUBA: If you wanna jump offa the Empire State Building but you live up in the Bronx—

JACKIE: Or Brooklyn—where I live.

CUBA: Anywhere.

JACKIE: Staten Island.

CUBA: If you ain’t got money for your token, you better beg, borrow, or steal. And if yer old enough to beg, you’re old enough to steal. So you end up what? You end up forgetting yer problems ‘cause you got money in yer pockets—and you’re living a life of crime.

Though I cannot lavish praise on stamina
            alone, I must acknowledge a femme

            fortitude. Last night, I tell myself,
a misstep at battery’s expense

so as to never consider the sentience
of a pleasure machine.

How her trembling must have lullabied
                   my drunk tongue the intricacies

                   of sexual decorum even in sleep,
how she may have throbbed

all night beside me, anticipating her
own reciprocal and tender invasion.

MAE: I used to have a fantasy where my high school boyfriend Dave Gellatly  – who totally cheated on me and like destroyed all of my self-confidence – would come to my window and knock on my window and then I would let him in and then he would be high on cocaine (even though I’m pretty sure he never did cocaine) and he would like rape me? And the whole time I’m thinking: Maybe I should scream! If I scream, my parents will wake up and come down here and save me and this whole thing will stop. But then if my parents come down here, they’ll see me naked with Dave on top of me. And I’m like a virgin. And super Christian. So I don’t scream. Because I’m too embarrassed. And he rapes me. And then later I decide to report it. And the whole town vilifies me and I’m like this outcast woman? And then Dave dies in a drunk driving accident and everyone is like: If you had just not reported it he would have died anyway and you would’ve gotten justice without having to besmirch his name

MAC: That was a fantasy?

MAE: I guess I just used to think about it when I needed to cry