Kim Gek Lin Short

COWGIRLS DON’T HAVE FLAT FACES La La always wanted to be a cowgirl. As far back as she could remember there was that suitcase of records Baba brought home from work. Work was supposed to be driving typhoon-stranded tourists from airport to hotel. Work was really taking the tourists to an alley stabbing them stealing their stuff. La La’s job was to listen to the radio all day music music during typhoon season for the Royal Observatory to interrupt TRANSIT SUSPENDED. When they did she woke up Baba he left for work. La La liked to listen to music music all day she played her records. Loretta Lynn Patsy Cline Emmylou Harris beautiful cowgirls. La La never asked for anything but one day she asked for a guitar. Her mother was hanging laundry out the kitchen window. Her mother blared COWGIRLS DON’T HAVE FLAT FACES gave her daughter a clothespin. La La put it on her nose. Wore it to school. Wore it to bed. Did not take it off even dyeing her hair.           THE DEVIL’S HANDPRINT The mother knew the child was bad from the start she came feet first too early while the woman was at work. There was a pop. Slid on the kitchen floor the grease her water a white dark man appeared maybe a cowboy tucked her apron up. Took the two feet presenting and pulled so hard left his handprint on the baby girl’s right leg, impression of fist closed round her fatty calf-part. When she is older the daughter asks where the bruise on her leg comes from. IT LOOKS LIKE CLAWS the mother broadcasts THE DEVIL. Next day gives her daughter cowboy boots tube socks.           HIDE-OUT The afternoon La La does not come home from school her mother goes into La La’s stash and eats all of her American cereal. She eats the loops. She eats the flakes. She tears into perfect strips the boxes when she’s done. What time is it, she asks the strips of cardboard. Time I holed up, they answer in La La’s voice. Show me, the mother says. The strips of cardboard ignite inching a hole into La La’s mattress. She stares into the hole. Inside is La La heat-dipped dripping. She can’t look, she says, but looks. There is a man she has seen him before he is fire flinching popping. When her husband gets back gone drunk he leans-shut the door behind him. With his body slides to the floor. Keeps sliding underground just as the singed head of his wife emerges from the box of Fruit Loops.       - - - - - -

Kim Gek Lin Short is the author of The Bugging Watch & Other Exhibits (Tarpaulin Sky Press) and the chapbooks The Residents (dancing girl press) and Run (Rope-a-Dope Press). She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter. Visit her website (http://songskip.blogspot.com) or blog (http://kimgeklin.blogspot.com).