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dancing girl press, 2013
$7.00 Ruth Foley lives in Massachusetts, where she teaches English for Wheaton College. Her recent work is appearing or forthcoming in Adanna, The Bellingham Review, Yemassee, and Weave, among others. She serves as Managing Editor for Cider Press Review. Lying Forgive me. In my hands, the astronaut becomes a mermaid, the shooting star becomes a fish—not even a starfish. I might need that one later. Your blood has become various things: vodka, the ocean, a pool of rippling water, a puddle of milk about to edge over a table. When I throw it in the air, it shatters. What I cannot remember, I invent. On the corner, children are laughing, playing keep-away with a softened basketball behind the tall pine fence in January air turned April warm— the nights are slowly getting shorter, and I can almost feel the sun again. I cannot reinvent that, although this house holds longer shadows than it might. Even now, sister, there are no children. There is only me, a pair of dogs asleep in the narrowing wedge of afternoon. Even now, I do not have a sister. This is how I make the world. |