My Cardboard Balcony

This Tennis Court by Belinda Roddie This tennis court was once a skeleton of a manor, owned by a wealthy yet agoraphobic family of five: The Earl of Braggart was wistful in rooms as he scribbled away on his own arms to turn calligraphy into tattoos. His wife, the Duchess Chagrin, painted red over both eyes and cheeks, but never on the lips. Their two sons, Condemned and Confused, did sway their heads to Gregorian chants, drugging themselves with opium each night. The youngest, Daughter Slight, held a pillow to her chest even as she ate dinner, but all the family just got thinner.

Master, do not tempt me. You haunt my conscience so. You make me trip over my robes each time I pass your study. You do not lift a finger. You keep on bleeding ink. I wonder if you see me, creeping past your study. The hallways are all iron, red rusted and mocking me. I do not try to see you. I do not try to please you.

The Hobo with a Bad Haircut by Belinda Roddie The hobo had a haircut that looked like it came from Hell, like bats gnawed away at nests of blonde and fat-eyed vultures tore at luscious locks with vicious talons. He kept one eye open all the time as he slept-walked through every nonsense town, mumbling every nonsense word that oozed from the clogged canal of his left ear. And only his left. Do tell, hobo, why do you not use your pair of rusted scissors in your cargo pants pocket? Or the shearing knife in your three- handkerchief bag? He would not tell me shit. He dragged his feet behind him and left tire tracks in the mud. Bobbing along the road like a half-dead pick-up truck, belching dust, and leaving the lice in his half-eaten coif to live out the rest of their beautiful lives.

I will never be a politician. What a life I'd have to lead! Going in and out of grandiose governmental buildings, planting seeds to grow thorny, hoary weeds 'til they coil around my neck and strangle me for sustenance and some haughty words, no less. Let me stay away from D.C. and the angry children there as they squeal out their obscenities and pull at each other's hair.

Something Smells by Belinda Roddie Oh, Hell, something smells. Draw up the curtains, 'cause I'm certain something's died here, never tried to tread out the muck or the carcass that's stuck and dried underneath the porch, you see. Oh, spoon me a ladle of some sweet thick maple to plug up my nose and tingle my toes and soothe my tongue with a tune that's sung high-pitched like a motor while this terrible odor is whiffed away like another Tuesday.

"I'll be there on Monday. That's a promise." "A promise?" "Yes. A promise. You need to believe me on this." She gripped my fingers so tightly as she raised her head from the pillow. The surgery was upcoming. I could not imagine the physical pain she was going through in her head. In her brain. Deep, deep within the mushroom folds of knowledge, gray matter going whiter by the day. "I'll be there. I promise."

Too Easy by Belinda Roddie Like a quick gulp of excess salmonella on a picnic espresso served hot in the carved out heart of an apricot. Doesn't make a damn difference how you inebriate the optic nerve, just the fact that you experience some sort of deja vu when sucking on a straw leading into your boyfriend's malt horror story, campfire songs laced with ecstasy, dripping down a spinal cord dangling from a clothing line. Makes sense that you spent a dollar on graduate school and fifty cents on a can of soda that you drank in the middle of a seminar where the professor vomited into a trash can and screamed literary Gatsby obscenities, nineteen twenty sentences with silver spectacles all caved in around the meters of semi-formal text, all swirling. Pseudo-importance. Faux glory. Deep aspirin heart attacks over the kitchen stove. Don't make me try to write a glossary, I have no more vocabulary to lick off the linoleum. Where you last set down your b...