Jackie Craven
Their rusty van idles by the lobby door and their belongings pile into the elevator—beanbag chairs and squeaky toys; cardboard boxes spilling gum wrappers, plastic straws, and small white pills; pit bulls and pythons; a murder of distant relations lugging damp sacks from washed-out cellars. Doesn’t the city have occupancy laws? All through the night, I hear them clump overhead. The trouble who tumbles from cabinet shelves. The trouble who grinds spoons in the garbage disposer and tosses orange rinds from balconies. The trouble who forgets how to breathe. There’s usually an elephant sucking up the air. Squabbling trapezists unfold a futon and turn themselves into parakeets. I try to sleep and the green one hurtles through my bedroom door, thrashing, squawking, and batting against walls. This is the trouble who struggles to fly. I hop on my bureau and flap my wings to demonstrate. The feathered sorrow wobbles and spins as though my room has no window.
#
Jackie Craven writes poetry and prose steeped in magical realism. Her collection of surrealistic prose poems, WHISH, won the Press 53 Award for Poetry. Previous publications include Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press) and chapbooks from Headmistress Press and Omnidawn. Recent work appears in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, and Ploughshares. She can be found at JackieCraven.com and on Zoom, where she hosts an open mic for writers.