Fiction - $10.00
Praise for
STRAW WRITES
“Straw Writes is nothing short of astonishing. The ghosts of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg weave through the text, and Christopher Shugrue ably shows himself to be one of their literary heirs.”
LINDA TATE,
autho r o f P O W E R I N T H E B L OO D
“In this sensitive and brave first book, Shugrue works hard to make sense of the materials of war, and of the time that follows it. He considers the memory that a person might build—and loop —in civilian life. The life where you get to love someone and follow them a little bit of the way. He is not afraid to write into the madness. What it means to go and not, always, return.”
B H A N U K A P I L , author of S C H I Z O P HR E N E “World on fire, ghost winds, naked children in the American night, as a Whitmanic and Ginsbergian ethos permeates the battleground of a Fallujah nightmare. This is the scape of Straw Writes, a hybrid text of conviction and urgency.”
A NNE W A L D M A N ,
autho r o f G OSS A MURMUR
ISBN-10 0-9915429-4-0 ISBN-13 978-0-9915429-4-9 51000
9
HOW I KISS HER TURNING HEAD
780991 542949
JENNIFER WOODWORTH m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m
HOW I KISS HER TURNING HEAD JENNIFER WOODWORTH MONKEY PUZZLE PRESS HARRISON, ARKANSAS
COPYRIGHT Š 2014 JENNIFER WOODWORTH All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief excerpts. Printed in the United States of America.
COVER PHOTO
Christina Marie Lambert
COVER & INTERIOR DESIGN Nate Jordon
ISBN-10: 0-9915429-4-0 ISBN-13: 978-0-9915429-4-9
Monkey Puzzle Press 807 S. Oak St. Ste. 3 Harrison, AR 72601 monkeypuzzlepr ess.com
For my lovely and delightful daughter, Mary Catherine.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Mother of One
1
M-A-R-backwards Y
10
Snow Day
12
– Part N
14
The Thumbnail Cranes
17
Stork Scissors & Baby Toes
18
we’re all marys
19
Ray
21
Notes on Being Her Mommy
JENNIFER WOODWORTH
NOTES ON BEING HER MOMMY — PART N
1. I dropped you off the first time at daycare at the Y for a workout, and then I hid behind a bookcase and watched you make your way in the world for the first time without me. 2. Day before yesterday, you with your little yellow dump truck and your shells. You’d pick one up, carry it to a new spot, come back for another, carry it to the same spot, until all the shells were moved. Then you put them all in your truck and wheeled them back, dumped them out, and did it all again and again. 3. Our legs, arms, bodies, hair, circled around each other like twigs in a nest. 4. Here are the bones you were looking for. 4.5 “Do you sometimes hate him as much as you love him?” It’s Rosie on the phone, talking about her husband. “I’m afraid so.” 5. When I lie down with you for your naps, you drift off in my arms, and I plan poems, one right after the other. When I get up to write them down, you’re still asleep, but so are the poems. Are they like dreams, mostly gone, or are they just napping? I think they are like dreams: I will have to learn how to catch them. They’re all about you, little cake. 6. Your irises are green, with a thick dark black line outlining them. I’ve never seen anything so lovely. Little person, big eyes, who lives in there?
14
HOW I KISS HER TURNING HEAD
7. I can’t get you to say yes! Everything is no. Sometimes it’s funny, but I just want to make you happy. Can’t you let me? 8. You say, “that’s right,” and “wheeeeee,” and your daddy taught you to say “pleeeeeeeeze” once when he was feeding you peas. How confusing is that? 9. You’re always putting my undies over your head and walking around with them like they’re a scarf. You seem especially attracted to the sexy lacy ones, which is a blessing, I suppose. 9.5 I forgot: One of your other first words is “bra”. You like to wear those around your neck and naturally you have the grace to wear only the prettiest little tiny ones. 10. I think maybe you’re having nightmares. A couple of times this week you’ve woken up screaming, disconsolate. I was so scared and sad for you. I couldn’t figure out how to calm you down. 11. Rosie’s baby—I can hear him on the phone when he’s nursing; he sounds like a guinea pig, these sweet little baby mammal sounds while he’s suckling. It makes my milk come down, after more than a year. 12. I haven’t taken a photo of you since Christmas. I don’t know what happened. What happened? You’re every bit as amazing, but it’s harder to catch you now. 13. When you walk, with every step, you’re falling. Somehow your foot keeps catching you though. 13.5 You’re four. Yesterday, I brought your lunch to your preschool and watched you playing with little plastic ponies for a while. You
15
JENNIFER WOODWORTH
looked so sad and lonely I could hardly bear it. I watched for a while, unable to leave until I saw you talk and smile. 14. I think the only thing you like at the playground is the swing. And you really love the swing. You like it best when I swing with you in my lap facing me. We end up swinging with me lying down, you on top of me, laughing and laughing, with your hair flying all over the place, brushing the leaves in the sky. 15. I’m biologically useless to my husband now.
16
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS “Mother of One” was first published in Bellow Literary Journal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Woodworth © Mary Catherine Sutton
Jennifer Woodworth lives in Virginia Beach with her husband and a short person she continues to call “the baby.” She is a recipient of the Orlando Award for Flash Fiction from A Room of Her Own Foundation in 2009 as well as the Writers Award in Poetry from The Nassau Review in 2013. Her stories and poems have appeared in Opium, Flashquake, and Bellow Literary Journal.
other books from
MONKEY PUZZLE PRESS Don’t Tease the Elephants by Jen Knox
Jen Knox packs a literary wallop in this collection of short fiction. Her stories and characters pound the earth they walk upon, demanding your attention. Literally and metaphorically, Don’t Tease the Elephants will rattle your cage. Fiction / 30 pages ISBN-13: 978-0-9915429-1-8
The Fatherlands
by Michael Trocchia Michael Trocchia shows us a collage of a time long past but as real and present as the space at the end of this period. In the background you will hear an overture of whispers, where ancestors have shaped his art, and our vision of it. Fiction / 52 pages ISBN-13: 978-0-9915429-0-1
The Boy in the Well
by Nicholas B. Morris Within these pages you’ll find Gravediggers and Mirrors. Life may not exist without horror, and the short story may not exist without Nicholas B. Morris. Fiction / 48 pages ISBN-13: 978-0-9886077-6-7
FICTION - $10.00
Beneath the current of a mother’s love is a dangerous undertow. Jennifer Woodworth’s stories show us the obsessions that motivate her characters’ actions, and build into waves that crash upon the shoreline of our subconscious.
ISBN-10 0-9915429-4-0 ISBN-13 978-0-9915429-4-9 51000
9
780991 542949
M O N K E Y P U Z Z L E P R E S S . C O M
HOW I KISS HER TURNING HEAD JENNIFER WOODWORTH