My Cardboard Balcony

Bed Death by Belinda Roddie The buzz of excess harmony; the dial tone of your idioms, factory-pressed and cooked into commodities. You attempted to breathe ecstasy where there was none to begin with. No kick, no habit-inducing spree of intellect. You offered little to nothing in terms of value. Beads break eventually, and the string that holds it all together separates into a bristled tail, and not even animals can wear the jewelry without feeling embarrassed. You held worth in second thought sentences, when the meaning was half diminished, half pulverized, in the mid-chew of lingual gristle. You couldn't tell me how you really felt because you felt nothing. You liked to use big words so you could be a big lover, and the flavor was lost when the marrow was buried under pearl-white lipids. The stuff I used for wax on temporary candles that lit our path to the bed only so many times before the spit tired out the wick.

The day I started out as an elementary school coach was the day my girlfriend passed away. She had been sick for a very long time, and we had just celebrated the start of my new job in the hospital, having snuck in a bottle of champagne. Still, the death felt painfully sudden, and I wasn't sure how I was supposed to function. My first class was fifth grade - the big guys. I had to be careful about my composure.

When I think about fools, I don't think about the same fools that others do. April and idiots aside, I think of the fools in Renaissance times, and how they were meant to snap people back into reality, not sugar coat it. The fools were, in fact, the wise ones, meaning to imply that the wise ones were the fools. Whether or not they sang songs or wore bells is irrelevant: The fools I know are the fools I relate to. We tell the truth, and we giggle while doing so.

by Belinda Roddie When the seedpods opened, the little farm girl screamed. But the truth was, there was nothing to be afraid of whatsoever. For out of the pods emerged the greenest, plumpest, tastiest giant peas that one did ever lay her blue eyes on. Her uncle, rugged and superbly masculine as he was, laughed and clapped his large hands together, then stooped down to pull a pea the size of a fist out of its opened, fleshy womb. He held it out to her niece, but the girl wildly shook her head. "Self-opening pea pods," her uncle tried to explain. "I swear to you, the peas will be the best you've ever eaten." The girl was not interested in eating something that came right out of a giant green shell without the need of human hands. Besides, she didn't like peas. Uncle Jared owned the patent on the giant genetically modified vegetables that he farmed now, having once operated the company born out of the genetic study, "Allegranto." In ...

"If we use the velcro shoes I invented," Lisbeth snapped, "then we can sneak into Letterman's mansion undetected." "How?" She sighed and shook her fist at Hammel. "You don't listen," she scowled. "The shoes have been equipped with astute stealth capabilities. They make no sound. They leave no prints. And they also carry a electronic signal in them that can corrupt burglar alarms like as solar flare."

Today, I ran my very last GirlSMART class with my ten second graders. And to be fair, it was pretty fun. The girls made bracelets for each other. They wrote nice messages to me and other teachers. They played "Two Truths And A Lie" while eating cupcakes. They completely wrapped up the literacy program, and next week will be their last week of school before the summer and before they all become third graders. I wish I could say that the whole experience was brilliant, and that I completely changed these girls' lives and got them back into reading full swing. I can't say that. Not with full confidence, anyway. I would be so happy if I positively influenced only one girl in that group of ten, because when it all came down to one thing, it was the students I worked with. And not just the GirlSMART students, either - I tutored several second, fourth, and fifth graders, though I wonder more with them if I made a difference. I was talking with my mom about my concerns to...

Impromptu E-mail Poem #1 by Belinda Roddie As she stood, the watery aneurysm erupted from the yellow cornea spreading molten gold up and down her face as he turned off the car radio. Piano jazz, Erroll Garner – “For once in my life, I’m got someone…” She wasn’t someone who cried very often, especially not enough to fill the cracks in the sidewalk and stain her collarbone with salt-blackened circles, salty words filling her mouth with excess. She asked, “Why aren’t you looking at me?” and he pushed his skull deep into his fist, bone against bone, knuckle to knuckle, buried in leather cushioning that would always grow sticky in the summer. “Why aren’t you looking at me?” Sour repetition. He wasn’t impressed. The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since May 13th, 2011.