My Cardboard Balcony

One Thousand Lamps by Belinda Roddie One thousand lamps lit up one somber night, the ember faces of one thousand dead young girls who had assisted in the fight for independence on a rocky red shore. Each girl had fought to attend school. Each bore the scars of their fathers' petty spells and rages. They wished to serve, write, and teach the ideologies of wisdom. Bells would not ring for their endurance, their wit, or their perseverance. But no tyrant could snuff the flames emitting from the lit oil cooking in glass spheres. No man could plant a boot into the teeth of those who cheered for the revolutionaries revered.

They said it was my responsibility to look after Alan. My responsibility to ensure that he didn't break into the booze cabinet again. My responsibility to check his breath to see if he had imbibed enough vodka, black rum, and cheap whiskey to make his liver implode in its cavity. It was my responsibility to take care of him, slap him around, keep him safe. He still died.

Thirteen Hundred Riesling by Belinda Roddie The staunch, fit benefactor prized open a bottle with gold teeth and silver spit, licking the grapevine above his mortar head. No glass for him. He wished to serve the jewel mines of his family. Fortune wrought with spinning wheels. Fragmented heart to hearts with supposed fancy titles. Disinfected within an oaken barrel. "Will you drink for me?" he asked. Not drink with him - for him. Ever the charismatic beggar. Cardboard cut-out of extremities. The sweetness is somewhat palpable. A smile cracks in two above a glass stem. The cinnamon is spread. The ice is served in buckets. The meal is dry and uncouth. But at least the wine is good.

He was going to write a musical about a magical goat who became friends with a unicorn. Only the unicorn was the head of a Unicorn Mafia, hellbent on getting the McDragons to pay their dues. The McDragons owned a little pub in Little Ireland in an unnamed city, and there the ale would be spicy hot - you know, because they were dragons. I listened to him make his pitch and could only nod.

Seeing-Eye Cat by Belinda Roddie My tabby was lost in a guide dogs center - not blind, just lost. A worker loved him, raised him up to be a seeing- eye cat, on a leash and everything. He got so big he could rival a Corgi, but everyone else thought the whole thing was mad for so many different reasons. But now he's my cat. I don't go out much. The darkness is very calm for me, and the scruffy fur is my therapy as I listen to the television set, my tabby nestled against my knee, his paw on the remote in case I want him to change the channel.

"Are you real?" The little red man looked blanky back at me. His top hat was smoldering with stardust. His tailcoat was spun out of cosmic satin. The cane was a musical baton that spread symphonies across the space, a curved treble clef built out of dust and sound. "Madam," he said to me in a sing-song voice, "if I wasn't real, would your dancing truly be as riveting to your soul?"

Lingual Vomit by Belinda Roddie Hitching two hitchhikers with a screwdriver and pair of spoons that glinted with a light that drove an old man on the corner crazy. Stop the presses, it's an otter breeding in the sad Pacific, tired as Hell but procreating for the sake of dead witnesses, purifying life. Oh, bother, don't forget the cheapest olive oil from the run down grocery store that withers gray like cornmeal. Take a hint from Old MacDonald, had a farm 'til he turned fifty and keeled over from a super stroke of luck in his cornea, kicking tables. Cows are eating burgers at the Five Cent Diner, licking grease off their splintered hooves, never minding stares from patrons. You can act like you understand every word that I am saying, but you can't fool anybody, so relax, don't bruise your cranium.