Mark Richard

We at school knew Mr. and Mrs. Cuts come from a family that eats children. There is a red metal tree with plastic-wrapped toys in the window and a long candy counter case to lure you in. Mr. and Mrs. Cuts have no children of their own. They ate them during a hard winter and salted the rest down for sandwiches the colored boy runs out to the pulpwood crew at noon. I count colored children going in to buy some candy to see how many make it back out, but generally our mother is ready to go home before I can tell. Our credit at Cuts is short.

Here is a list of things Carol has thrown at Genius: a sneaker with a toe full of sand in it, a coffee cup with a crescent of coffee in it, a raisin box with a half a box of raisins in it, and a picture of Genius holding a young girl under red and green plastic lanterns strung beside a pool. All of the things Carol has thrown at Genius have hit him in the face. The picture of Genius holding the young girl beside the pool Carol had to throw at Genius’ face over and over because Genius was asleep. While Genius was asleep was always when Carol looked through his stuff and read his mail. When she found the picture of Genius holding the young girl she had to throw it as hard as she could on Genius’ face over and over again until Genius finally woke up.

I began as a boy, as a human-being boy, a boy with a secret at sea and sentenced to cook in Big Miss Magine’s stone-scoured pot, my long fish body laid, tail flipping, into that solid stone pot, scales ripped and skin slipping from my meat tissue-threaded in the simmer, my body floating from my long, fish-bodied bones, my bones boiled through and through down to a hot bubbly sweet steaming broth, lisping whispers of steam twisting to the ceiling, curling in your curtains, speaking to you in your sleep.