is brought to you every Monday. Each week spotlights a single creator, showcasing one or more of their works for your enjoyment.
Three from RJ Equality Ingram
They said towhead when they really meant kid in the wheelchair / Garden variety skeletons inhabit ghost towns between the carousel & the next millennium…
SEERSUCKER
They said towhead when they really meant kid in the wheelchair / Garden variety skeletons inhabit ghost towns between the carousel & the next millennium / Apples on sticks dipped in leather colored caramel & weather so nice all the golf courses closed out of respect for the amusement parks / Welcome asphalt & skinned knees to the migrant headache of too short to ride / When we dropped I spat out my gum & caught it on the way back up & I can’t believe you missed that how could you Mom? / The ice show was the same as last year & the dancers smoked menthols behind the go-karts & one of them smuggled some weed into their dorm / Penny pressers slowly going out of business / Right here is where the palmist told me where my life line ended & she was half right / When I came back the next year to show her my scar she was an entirely different woman & I too was no longer blonde & conservative / Is that skeleton climbing out of the daughter’s window or the mayor’s? / Bougainville / Fish & Chips $12 for three pieces & Tartar Sauce $2 / The animatronic skeleton steering the engine chuckles at every pedestrian crosswalk like he’s ushering around a new flock of marks / His shirt hasn’t been washed since the ride opened.
Who the hell charges for Tartar Sauce? | Turn to page 59
Help the skeleton boyfriend escape | Turn to page 60
EQUANIMITY
We carry flowers from the trunk into the hospital / We buy plane tickets & cheese curds from street vendors & paint our faces like lions & raves & a cloudless night sky / We jump between train cars while we’re still moving & when the ice cream truck drives by we get a popsicle that looks nothing like the cartoon character on the wrapper / We forget we’re bad at poker & when its our turn we forget what equanimity means but we say it anyway & hope no one notices / We skate until our knees start to hurt & read tarot cards in the bleachers to our friend’s parents & they are so good at pretending they’re interested they start to be interested / We told ourselves we were going to stop hanging swords on the wall but we did it anyway & when they ask us what we want to be buried with we say we just want something to protect us on the other side / We gave into peer pressure but said we avoided laundromats bc we got so distracted making up backstories for folks we always forgot which machine we were using / We gave up waiting for the big check to come so we lost our keys in the gym locker room / We folded napkins on Saturdays & in the back of the van we kept a torch style flashlight & I can’t tell you the number of times we needed to use it / We used it to corral the kittens back into the cardboard box we found them in / We used it to change the spare tire / We checked the mole on your back & said it was nothing / It was nothing / At least I thought it was nothing.
Ask to be buried with a sword | Turn to page 69
Ask to be buried with a torch | Turn to page 27
Don’t worry it was nothing | The End
SHORTHAND
Your Aunt Bev called & said she told everyone not to touch the bookcases until you’ve had a chance to comb through them / She says she knows what she’s looking for but she’s probably the only one & she’s probably right / The only Ingram capable of zen bc she knows when to stop looking / Your brother’s on his way with a kid on his lap & a golf club in one hand with his other on a tiller / Families shrink & grow a little bit at a time like an inchworm that’s always catching up to itself / We’ve got an earlobe in just about every state but only half of them seemed to be connected to anything that listens / Except Bev / Bev listens / Listens to the whales that dive to places you’ve never heard of just bring back stories & idle minds that listen / Maybe that’s why she knew what you were looking for when the family asked what you wanted / Grandma Helen’s Shorthand Dictionary / A book hardly bigger than a television remote with tiny folded practice pages that resembled archaic scrolls of spells you whisper to yourself to keep out the dangerous ones at night / Bev said she found the little book next to an etiquette guide & rightly assumed you would appreciate your starchy grandmother’s uptight style guide alongside the ancient Gregg / But the rest of us had no where to look.
I got to go your brother is calling | Turn to page 63
Could you call me back when you land? | The End
RJ Equality Ingram lives next to a cemetery in Portland, Oregon & works as a necromancer for Goodwill Industries of the Columbia Willamette. Their second poetry collection, Peacock Lane, is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing & their debut poetry collection, The Autobiography of Nancy Drew, was also published by White Stag in 2024. More work can be found in Deep Overstock, Luna Luna & Voicemail Poems, among others. Photographs of their cats Twyla & Senator Padme Amidala, as well as their little free library, can be found on Instagram @RJ_Equality
Image Credits: “The End of Misery” by Adriaen van de Venne
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/%27Ellenden-eind%27_Rijksmuseum_SK-A-1770.jpeg