Friday Mar 29

AMANDA DEO Author Amanda Deo gets up early. She has had work in HOUSEFIRE, Word Riot, 1/25, APT, Ditch, Short, Fast and Deadly, em:me, Gobbet, Regardless of Authority, Right Hang Pointingand others. Her chapbook,You Sang it Back To Me, is to be released in July 2013 by Mad Rush Press. She lives in Toronto with her husband and a chubby beagle.
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TWISTER



If you look closely, even the doll house has been destroyed. I wonder what your face and your house and your feelings look like from outer-space They say stuff like this is hard to get over but you seem to be doing fine. I had a dream about the aftermath where you were trying to communicate with me by rolling and twisting your tongue. It was silent as it roared through the air and touched down on the crown of our backyard fences. You, not the storm.







THE OPPOSITE OF A GROWTH SPURT



I'm aware I will never be a woman the night you leave me for another city. I'm most aware of this when I touch people's biceps and text my old boyfriends and tell them it's only ever been you. I know it will never happen in the same way I can't ask you how your day was or let you seek shelter underneath me during a blackout. Inside the station I sit next to you but pretend we aren't together when someone asks for directions. I hold my foot on your shadow's neck while you look away waiting for the next train. On the platform I disappear into a trench coat that sells knock-off watches. In the next city you will re-adjust your clothes and I will never be found and the light will take so much longer to reach me.







A CITY FAMOUS FOR RUINING



We told each other no one ever moves there. Not even Michael Jordan can make it work. We were sitting in your backyard with our legs crossed like Indians but you aren’t allowed to say like Indians any more. I picked blades of grass and rubbed and split them until my fingers were green. There was a hole in your fence I had crawled out of last year, drunk and desperate, that your dad had since covered up with plywood. It was a different colour than the rest of the fence. I wondered if it pissed him off when he had to fix it. When you got up you smoothed your jean pockets once or twice over and walked back onto the porch like I’d see you on Monday.







ABOUT MY NECK WAS HUNG



The light in here is August. Your lips are like paper I want to set on fire. I wonder what you are doing now, like if a masseuse is rubbing your heart back into the tip of your throat. A part of me was never into it any way. A part of me prank called you for the last forty-five days. I hear the way you sound, like grocers folding cardboard boxes that smell like lobster or a widowed turtle dove, when I tell you I would have only fucked you on the weekends. I pause when I look at my face and I see I have run out of time.