My Cardboard Balcony

Time To Be A Pain by Belinda Roddie I'll hover around your bedside until you wrap your arms around my pelvis, drag me toward the cavern of sheets, nuzzle me between your goodies, and swing me round and round in dream land on a rainbow tire lifted by a neon rope. Yep, time to be a royal pain in the ass until you love me, damn it, love me, until my eyes dry out and my tongue goes gray and my words flop out like loose flags flapping in the stale Confederate breeze. Don't make me beg for a crisis, to get you to pity me. I don't want to be pitied. I want the absolute chaos of your body against mine, warm syrupy goddess sugar seeping over my pores, clogging them, until I break out in big, red stars, and I light up like the Milky Way on E, swiveling, swaying, until I collapse against your chest, breathe in once, and start leaking.

When the poor creature sneezed, I wanted to say, "Bless you," but my cousin would say that wouldn't be right, because animals allegedly have no souls, according to his little black pocket book of spongy cake faith. But as I knelt beside the hound and scratched it behind its ears, watching its nostrils moisten with snot, I had to bless it. It was too cute not to have a soul. I would not have it any other way!

Salad Bar by Belinda Roddie We met beside the wilting spinach and artificial crab meat, sucking in the stale smells around the lunch trays and the party balloons suspended on glass. I put down my plate of romaine and served you cool ranch, while you offered the orange chipotle bottle you had squeezed firmly against your right hand. We didn't talk much, and certainly not about the leafy green. But we did talk green. Green Washingtons, green envies, green stalks of past hope sprinkled by a garden hose in the very, very dead of July. You sat down beside me, at a table pushed into the precarious corner, where the family of six belched out protein and oils a booth away. And we ate salad. And it was okay.

"What were you mumbling about earlier?" "Nothing." Mrs. Zelvig looked cross. "Don't lie to me, Gabrielle. What were you mumbling?" "Nothing. Really, nothing." "Nothing at all, or nothing you consider important?" Gabrielle whipped her head up from her resting spot on her desk. "Whatever, Mrs. Zelvig! Christ! Would it kill you not to pick on me for at least one day right in front of the class?"

Tra-la-la Doom by Belinda Roddie And the stranger picks a banjo as the sun seeps red from out between its unforgiving fingers, the flare pulsing, nebulae convulsing, betraying sense of emotion to the shrapnel flying every which way. It was not meant to be like this. The pounding of feet in a rambunctious display of pride, spicy hot, served in plastic bottles, splashed onto smiles desiring cool tongues. And then the smoke rose. And then the red spread. And then the doom fell.

Taffy McSnarkerson had a great deal of leverage with the Mayors of Windywald and the Governor of New Arkansassippi. And he barely even moved a muscle for it. He just wormed his way out of his bed and eeled his way into his chair, punched in a few numbers, and got the many corporate tycoons to grovel at his feet. Was it his charming good looks? His soothing voice? His influence? Or his cold, dead eyes?

Anything geometric eluded me. So did anything algebraic. Or trigonometric. Or statistical. Or anything remotely mathematical. Except for arithmetic. I could add up how many slices of pizza I ate versus how many cans of cider I drank any damn day. But Dolores, well, she was something else. Pythagoras would have cowered to her expertise. Every math theory became her bitch.