My Cardboard Balcony

Bargaining by Belinda Roddie Let's make a deal: You take me to Bret Harte's Poker Flat, and I'll make sure you don't end up like Oakhurst, with the teeth of his own Derringer lodged in his sagging aorta. His skin pulsed and cried for some sort of panacea. The stuffing filled the scar. The strings tied themselves up into a hot air balloon. If you push your luck, you lose your luck. If you're out of luck, the night terrors suck. If I fork over a handful of fool's gold, you can slip it under your tongue like a fake token of gratitude to a god with mangy hair and a misshapen nose and a lisp from a cleft palate that he was never able to get fixed. The fates all settle their spines over tea in the basement. They discuss you and me, both equally. They giggle. They know I'll call your bluff. And in return, you'll probe my mind with second thoughts in the shape of a 9 millimeter smile.

I can't see colors. Shapes, sure - squares and triangles and circles and cubes. I can detect the verticals and the horizontals, the sharp and the soft, the texture and the tactile. I can see movement - quick or slow, sometimes even when it's such a blur that sound trails after it like a confused child. But colors? Nothing of the sort. Sepia is a foreign word to me. It's synonymous to my reality.

Anger by Belinda Roddie I think I am inspired most by both Basquiat and Van Gogh Van Gogh for his yellow matured sorrow Basquiat for his skeletal rage Their imagery rests comfortably in the hottest corners of my mouth The eye sockets of a skull is fitted with supernovae from a starry night the curve ball of the cosmos lobbed furiously in my direction aimed at my post-twenties passion

Denial by Belinda Roddie Please don't let it be so that my darling has been stolen away from me that her restless soul has been set free Please, please don't let it be so She was growing flowers for me She was growing flowers with sickly buds and the petals all drugged with the perfume of ecstasy She was growing flowers for me The carriage was waiting for her Its driver was dressed in black wearing spurs The hum of the Styx in everyone's ears The carriage was waiting for her And here I am, alone with no one else to call my own with tears that petrify into somber stone Please, please don't let it be so

"So what's it about?" "Um...what's what about?" "The story." He gesticulated wildly at the book. "Th-the novel. What's the plot?" "Oh." She giggled. "It's not much, really. It's pretty simple. Just this young woman who decides to teach in Alaska for a year and winds up falling in love." "With a handsome guy from town?" "A handsome gal, actually, but close enough."