“Life Is a Shitstorm” © Mark Blickley
Of: -ic
My faded fleece pants reek of celery. Onion, or
something. Organic. Water in the toilet bowl
sloshes when storms reach 25 miles an hour
around here. Titanic. Linoleum dunes
ripple where old floor rifts into new. Dynamic.
I call on the tired landline to that back-then
land of mine. Transatlantic. We bury
the done-wheezing parakeet in a tin
under the maple. Manic. Mushrooms
gather in the crawl space, moss
sits in window sills. Satanic?
Messianic? My insomniac dad stabs at
the rattling stop sign with a screwdriver.
Tympanic. We surmise the smell on pants,
carpets, cabinets is fungal. My lungs
seize. Cyanic. Still, on tiptoes a look
out the window, across newly sprouted
infill homes, we glimpse the once
snow-capped mountain. Panoramic. Subtly,
dormantly volcanic. I wish it weren’t.
This house, alive, eats creatures. Ferally
botanic. True to my people, I channel
Torschlusspanik.
Alina Zollfrank dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. She had her chest cracked open right before her ninth birthday and since then has felt an urgent ticking sensation. Alina is scared of the most ridiculous things and keeps a list of English words she finds mesmerizing (like spume, bombilation, and louche).
Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo. He is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the flash fiction collection, Sacred Misfits(Buttonhook Press).