2017 Poster Contest Winner

Texture

by ana kateri salas montano

Looking for Elias

by maggie shoup

Sam screamed like he’d been stabbed in the jugular when I tossed the drink in his face. Bet he was angling for an even score over the bruises. “My eyes! My eyes!” “What the fuck about them?” I replied, noting the purple drops slowly ebbing off the cracked ceiling like spattered blood, and the acrid smell of plaster and cheap wine. We’d been in a wrestling match over my car keys again. He pocketed the keys smugly and planted his rugby shoulders in front of the door as if to emphasize that I would take what I had earned. I rubbed my twisted fingers while Sam complained about the strained muscle he got throwing me against the wall. He caressed his pecs and reminded me that I had done it again. One day at an extra-long stop light, Elias had told me he would good and leave me if I asked for a divorce. “Shut up,” I replied. “You are only a fetus.” He responded with a plume of anger that hit me icy hot around the navel. I knew he meant it. Now Elias was gone, his tiny curved spine lost in the gray mash and stringy blood ejected by my dysfunctional uterus. Maybe I had displeased him. Maybe he had other plans. Elias would be nine weeks and four days. My breasts would be heavy with milk. My eyes would be swollen as I yawned the stroller up our long sidewalk and claimed to the neighbors that I hadn’t folded laundry in a week. No one likes a woman who can do everything. The old mahogany dresser resisted as I pried open the top drawer and dug for the stash I’d sworn to bury in the yard next to the dead chickens and an aged hermit crab. Soft striped pants. Cotton diaper hemmed in rainbow thread. Wool booties with slippery satin strings. A splinter from the oak drawer bottom jabbed my thumb. “Are you in there?” I whispered, sucking off a drop of blood. I took a guilty glance backward to see that Sam wasn’t looking, and sorted my prize into a baby-shaped lump on the bed. I wondered if Elias had found a new uterus, one that didn’t come with a lazy bitch or a dad who thought maybe we could go for the vacuum thing if it was too late to do it with the pills. No one answered. Elias had said there was a damn good reason Sam should stay, and if I couldn’t trust him, whom could I trust? He had excellent grammar for a fetus; he was almost urbane, and consequently, very popular. Most evenings his companions congregated on the back porch in the dark where I sat listening to spring peepers, pulling the bitter petals out of yellow dandelions one by one. No one would give me answers. Apparently they thought I couldn’t take it. All they wanted to discuss was the fallacy of time, my unnatural attachment to physical manifestation, and the sentient nature of the universe itself. I was rarely in the mood and frequently interrupted, demanding “What’s your name,