The Scent of Fear
It is not
unlike the lye, and what you need to know
is
nothing to brag about: the vestigial nipple of
the
nutria, a handbag filled with other handbags,
a buzzard
in a long, blonde wig, the idea that you
could--if
you wanted to--control the weather.
It is
criminal to celebrate fragility. The bees want
your
pollen; the chickens want your plants; bugs
will
populate your made-up dreams about other
poets and
farms. Tell me what city I'm in, and I'll
tell you
my name. The rabbits sense the smells
of stale
human bodies, of legs stacked larva-esque
in the
sprawl of an underground garden. The weather
begins to
remind you of movies you haven't seen,
of books
you will never read, and of the sounds
of the
sounds of trees. There is no place in which
you don’t
want traffic to move forward. There
are
universal misdeeds. There are times when
resurfacing
is the expectation.
The Shrunken Head
It’s been nearly fifty years and no
one remembers
the country he was filming in. Headhunting
occurred in many regions of the
world. Is it
accidental that he couldn’t tell
you to stop making
sentences or plans? When you
stumble upon
the head of your beloved on
Match.com, the proper
response is:
a.
Develop an attraction to striped shirts.
b.
Never have the intention of doing the right thing.
c.
Grow in popularity.
d.
Move to a suburb of Milwaukee and cultivate a suntan.
e.
Bring your best feelings towards the cooler.
People, look too helpless and you
will cover
yourselves with pastry, fashions,
burning down,
and awkward conversations.
This is the age of being touched:
gently. Don’t touch.
Death Swim
It wasn’t about the war. It wasn’t about
the lake. It was about fire and the lakes of oil,
shot from a helicopter. Those are not lakes.
These are full of oil, the oil is literally
boiling, and the process of watching
makes you wonder how long you should
make the same mistakes without thinking
about them. I say, there must be a better
way than this to evolve. There
should be a way around impossible love,
a legitimate reason women love horses first,
then men. There must be a way for bone
marrow to settle around the heart and heal
Only sometimes do situations not turn out
as you might have expected. Think how you
might have overused me, merrily screwed me
over the promises of darkness. If I were
a naked vulture, things would be the same.
My experiments will not have gone
unnoticed. A man outside will invent
something for this. This is me walking
away. This is me as seen from behind.
It is a fact that we will grow old before
learning to settle our deeds near fire.
It is a fact that civilians do not need
search warrants to enter each other’s homes.
Erica Bernheim holds degrees from Miami University, The
University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the University of Illinois at
Chicago. She is currently Associate Professor of English at Florida Southern
College, where she directs the creative writing program. Her first full-length
collection, The Mimic Sea, was published by 42 Miles Press (Indiana University
South Bend) in 2012. She is also the author of a chapbook, Between the Room and
the City (H_NGM_N B__KS, 2006) and her work has recently appeared or is
forthcoming in The Laurel Review, Georgetown Review, Saw Palm, and The Iowa
Review.
