Laura Bandy
A secret trail through neighbors’ backyards led to Jenny’s house, blue light from our television flickering farther and farther behind. Jenny was out front, dragging a stick through overgrown grass. Look, she said, the moon is covered in blood. She was always saying things, but the moon was a strange color, dark red, swollen like a tick. We took turns at a rotten slit in the fence spying on the Selby twins coaxing a girl to show them something. Their parents were never home. Moonlit, her bare skin seemed to smolder. Sometimes they come over, Jenny said, those boys are wild. We watched for a while then backed away, went inside for dinner. The house was dark, only glow a dim flicker from the kitchen. Her parents were deaf, and the phone was hooked up to a yellow light bulb, it would flash suddenly and the walls would shudder. I’m cooking tonight, Jenny said, they teach late. Here, and she handed me a long knife. There was a frozen chicken on the counter, but I didn’t know what to do with it. Experimenting, I slid my knife into the hole beneath, twisted until bloody pieces trailed out. Allow me, Jenny said, plunged her hand in and pulled out the rest. There was a scratching at the back screen door. Either Goliath got out or it’s the boys, Jenny said, pulling a chain dog leash from the wall. Let’s go see.
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Laura Bandy received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. From 2009-2013 she attended the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers, where she received the Joan Johnson Poetry Award. She has had work published in Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry, The Cossack Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, After Hours, and Inscape Journal, and has poems forthcoming in Triggerfish Critical Review. She hails from Jacksonville, Illinois, home of the Ferris wheel.