Bodega | The Abandonarium

—After Lucie Brock-Broido

Who may or may not have been there:

A girl digging through cans

in the pantry into the upper shelves

for night kept watch starless and undisturbed

A body of feathers a gender of down

that prickled through the skin ingrown

insubordinate habits

fingering lipskin and wool

her lap the rare occurrence of heavy human

hair

A miracle saffron

a vegetable’s

careful quobbing heart

A doll that moved without a hand to hold it

size: indeterminant

playful and secretive

In the bathroom bubbling translucent and pink

A mermaid who remembered her sister

who chose walking

whale-eyes gooey

well into three weeks out of water

A swelling woman fingers drying as marrow

in the tub of bone

liberated from body

listened ear to drain

away homesickness

long a covetous creature

experienced joy as a shower of glass

In the vestibule waiting to be re-robed

A boy on an orange pleather chair

took comfort in the clinical

A patient verdant coated

hair a concatenated mess of moss

answered many complicated questions with silence

Outside every window

A witch waiting for dinner

Her companion fish-legs flayed

radicchio red

A cat sleeping on a baby’s-breath

My mother

when young curly blond

fur stained

blue-fin tuna whom the mermaid instinctively knew

A painter of Mondrians

poor most frequently mid-month

sending the notes of

cheesy pop-songs through the pipes

kept maps of the ocean floor

A fashion model

legs extended to

a frame of boredom

A sofa the colour of sand

A museum of broken bodies

often Greek or Roman

A statue of a girl with the body of a bird early Mesopotamian

In worse wear in the Abandonarium

The songs of Thaïs

contracted with heavenly fever

lust swayable

played on repeat

A boy / girl / neither / looking out past the trees

eating candy

A heart held by balloons

You remember how every hour they called out? It is still not certain to whom.

93 – May 2020

By Brennan Bogert

The Abandonarium