Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero Ano y Felicidad.

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero Ano y Felicidad.

I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas
I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas
I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas
From the bottom of my heart.

She Gets What She Came For by Chella Courington

No matter what you do, I sing “Stairway to Heaven” without end. Amen. Sugar on my tongue, chameleon-long, you raise your cotton shirt, spitting sticky rain. Over the Dutch Elm, Chagall’s wedding couple link hands and catch us in their drift, or is it their draft? Our stretchy limbs angel wings, our eyes spilling—Tibetan monkeys screech of Buddha in drag. Father Hennessey dispenses 50 Hail Marys for fucking mother’s best friend’s husband. Our fingers slip.

But this I know for sure: Mother sees the sun set, calls me high and low. Above Home Depot, I’m mistaken for a clumsy crow. Even when she ropes this body in, I won’t be there, not standing on the porch at 301 Sycamore but floating overhead, watching the girl who plunders and prowls. Last night she snaked into a bed on Main Street, spread arms and legs till the body ripped apart, the right side falling to the floor. The left side waiting for Chagall.




First Published: Tapas short fiction honorable mention, Doorknobs and BodyPaint (Issue 55, August 2009)

Happy Birthday, Emily Dickinson

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -

And now We roam in Sovereign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him -
The Mountains straight reply -

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through -

And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head -
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared -

To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -

Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die--

Blood Moon by Chella Courington

Sophie tickles my cheek with her tongue, and I give her my right arm. Like the Virgin’s mantle sliding over my shoulder, she rolls her muscles to the drummer’s heartbeat, washing me in light. Mama calls my boa a serpent, and me a dirty coochie dancer. Jesus is in covered-dish suppers at the Boaz Baptist Church. But I believe he’s in Sophie. At the Bottoms Up Bar she first appeared—eyes milky, scales ghost white. Just slept on a cover under the sink and refused to eat for six days. On the seventh, clouds evaporated. Clear dark eyes and bright brown body. Three days later, she rubbed and pushed her nose against the back screen until the skin broke. All day she pressed against the linoleum floor, never letting up. At night a translucent ribbon lay on the quilt—eye caps on top.



First Published: “Blood Moon,” Doorknobs short fiction first-prize winner, Doorknobs and BodyPaint (Issue 55, August 2009).