© June 10, 2017. All Rights Reserved.
In Portland, sweet as saccharine, a mother of five, Barely alive from her harsh attack.
Wearing a mildewed, yellow shirt, Devika, 4-years-old, strangles her with a diaper.
As French chanson music plays in the township, Jane searches outside for bugs to smack.
On a drill press table, a snobbish Kim osculates her lily-white, imaginary friend lover,
Wearing an excessive amount of her mother’s make-up in her capacious closet.
Gaudelia giggles with gusto, flickering on the kitchen lights
While Samantha flushes the hurling toilet and piddles after a lazy sit.
The family cat (Damerae) is on the ceiling-mounted fan, ridding his fear of heights.
Meanwhile, as if a homemade, licorice dessert, Jane picks up a spider from a crevice
With her mouth wide open. Her mother’s mellifluous scream passes the town,
Loud enough to cease her engrossment like a timeless promise.
Jane licks the fugacious cioccolàto on her gelato cone as the sunray beams down.
“J-Ja-Jane J-Ju-Judith Frisky! Put that spider down right this second,”
Overhearing the struggling yell, Kim hits her head against the hiding wall,
Feeling like a circus animal receiving a tangible french kiss, then shunned.
Mother Purnima removes the reeking diaper from her neck, which smells like ethanol.
Of abraded skin, her sore neck matches the fudge. The rest of her children are five.
Devika stuffs a pizza slice inside a toaster with unsanitized hands.
With apprehension, an ill-starred Devika climbs down a stool able to survive,
Turning around to see the mother’s forlorn, dark figure. Purnima misunderstands.
Flicking on the light switch, mother chucks the food in the trash bin, unplugs the toaster,
Then catches the humbled black cat, (the factotum) who suffers from PTSD.
It’s the ninth time she saved Damerae’s life. She tears a rolled up poster,
Which was a silhouette of her kissing her husband between a potpourri.
Purnima yells, “Quiet!” There’s cricket sounds from the opened, front window.
She proceeds her vehement yell of verbal ecocide, “We’re going on a vacation!”
Gaudelia weeps in deep distress. Kim’s lover is see-through.
The children are held incommunicado like a solemn oath opposing desperation.
The cordial cat sweeps. Icky, white substance falls from the ceiling to the mother’s face.
Kim holds a round, black pincushion walking away as Purnima looks up.
Sections of the ceiling are covered with spoiled food. Kim pulls out pins. It’s a disgrace.
Jane enters. Damerae ogles her bowl of strawberry chutney and affogato in a black cup.
The evening is priceless. Devika twirls a vacuum cord while spraying an inhaler.
As if saliva can be refined with the mother’s touch, she wipes her forehead.
Pretending the affogato is liquor, Jane falls. It’s December,
Where Jane’s fear is ahead. Jane’s face is redder than her last bunk bed.
There’s an indefinite future when weight falls down the cat’s flexuous spine.
Devika sits on the cat giggling. Thus, the mother carries Devika.
Damerae’s form turns serpentine. Kim locks the front door. She despises the sunshine.
After adjusting her children’s booster seats, the van careens to California.
She’s going bananas. She promised herself she wouldn’t cede control of her place.
Like she’s speeding to Golgotha, she pass a bevy of benevolent pedestrians,
Who assist two, old ladies in wheelchairs cross the street. It’s an ineffable disgrace.
Her palms covers her face as Devika yells, “Green light!” louder than two martians.
She stops the van. One old lady is breastfeeding conjoined twins
While another is smoking a cigar in serenity. Thus, the smoker walks free.
The exasperated mother feels like she belongs in a loony bin as the world spins.
Crashing to her windshield, a clean-cut artist drops a red paint brush down a marquee.
The windshield is cracked. “I want to go home!” Samantha whines as screams occur.
With her face out the windshield, Purnima looks up at the guilty painter,
Then, the airbag shoots out the steering wheel. Her eyesight turns to a blur,
But she hears her children being immature. She turns into an enraged restrainer.
Purnima pops the airbag with her sharp fingernails, driving pass dilapidated buildings.
Devika’s palms connect for a meretricious prayer as her mother steps out of the car.
Wind storms from Purnima’s lungs. She screams like receiving a hundred bee stings.
The painter is petrified while the sun sets. Things can’t possibly get more bizarre.
Isaiah Lawrence 