All three of them by Chelsea Biondolillo, Chad Smith andamp; Jeff Questad

He hated dirty thrift stores. It felt like a coating of slime had engulfed his body. It was nasty in there, but he was on a mission. She had given him specific instructions. No cheating. Bring three items purchased from a thrift store. He was getting excited as he headed down the aisle. He had never participated in this sort of thing before. He took the ski goggles, red rain boots, and ceramic Easter bunny statuette to the register. He would wash his hands later. What would she do with/to him when she saw how well he followed the rules? He daydreamed (would he wear the boots, would the statue be a prize?) right past the strange car in her driveway. As he lifted a hand to ring the bell, a masculine WHOOP came from inside, followed by her guffaw. He froze, his hand tightening around the bag, regretting that the goggles weren’t something more useful against this intruder upon their special evening, like a tomahawk. The raised bed adjacent to the door was gone to seed. There was a tipped pail spilling old hand tools. Sliding commando style along the wall, he took up a rusty three pronged implement that communicated seriousness. Under a window now, he leaped up. She was reclined, casually undressed. He’d never noticed how blood gathered at the top of her cheeks when she’d been laughing. Her smile was lurid with hope. He folded and sank down. She’d never been so beautiful.

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Glacier by Chelsea Biondolillo

Thousands of miles away, you are sitting as still as stone Your face, highlighted by the screen into thin slivers of blue scowls, while you chip away at some imaginary landscape of pixels and light. You are afraid that I am gone. Next to me, miles of ice stretch toward the horizon Crushing into the mountain, cracks become blue chasms under its weight, as rocks groan out the injustice of gravity. I try to climb above the treeline, try to catch my breath, try to escape.

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LATECOMBER by Chelsea Biondolillo

She sure is wailing; shrill as a gull over the surf. This little girl, maybe six, just fell on the sidewalk and skinned the holy hell outta her knees. The little caps—I can see them from here—are slicked bright red. She was running like crazy up the wooden steps from the beach after her grandpa had hollered at her. Her grandma was taking pictures from the railing. You can see the humped black rocks, majestic with that poetic looking surf around them just fine from up here, so most folks never even go down the stairs. They snap one, two, three shots and pile back into their cars and head south for the Trees of Mystery or something. Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not staring: I come to watch the waves. The girl was just in my line of sight, poking around the tide pools. She gathered pieces of shells, sea-smoothed wood, pebbles. All the good stuff got snatched by beachcombers at sunup, but she didn’t seem to care: picked up the shards just like they were whole. It was them shells caused her so much agony. She caught her toe at the landing, and didn’t want to let any of her handfuls go. She had to drop hard on her knees to catch herself. Even now, while her grandma fixes her up, I can see her little fists, closed tight around them. She’s looking over that railing, like she’d go back down and do it again.

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Punk Rock Girls (or, Violent Femmes, Mt. Hood, 1990) by Chelsea Biondolillo

A sea of squinting eyes, upturned toward the sun, we sing along as the band whines out anthems. A breeze blows across an inland sea of crushed red plastic cups. Here and there, paper boats smeared with ketchup drift against a tide of brochures: PETA, Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, while we rage: a joyful storm surge threatening the levy of bouncers. We’re most concentrated up front, still an etiquette is observed. Eyes forward, hands where we can see them, you know? At stage’s edge, a crowd of girls has drifted like flotsam in an attempt to avoid the boots and elbows of the churning pit. We don’t know each other, but we know the rules: no smoking in the crush, no flailing wild in ecstasy—that’s what the fringe is for. Suddenly we are cleaved, as a shirtless, sweaty kid throws himself at the barricade. Hooking his arms through the bars, he clamps tight. His legs kick out into us, forcing us back. This is how he wants to testify: he calls this dancing. At first we’re ruffled, sharing eye-rolls, heads shaking. And then, one of us grabs at his leg, hoists it up. He looks back, his eye-whites rolling like a spooked horse. Suddenly all our hands are upon him, lifting him like a lever, up over the fence. A bouncer rushes to him, grabs his writhing, frothing frame and deposits it at crowd’s edge. It will take him forever to get back. Without a word, we return to the band.

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Safari Club, Estacada OR, circa 1979 by Chelsea Biondolillo

Our knives and forks clatter against the simple white plates. Over my grandfather’s shoulder, a leopard is frozen in mid-leap, his chipped claws sinking into a gazelle. The gazelle has been painted with red stripes to heighten the illusion of split-second predation. I always ask to walk the perimeter of the restaurant. My grandmother takes my hand and we head first through the Arctic, where ermines, captured behind glass, are stuck forever half white. The walrus head seems impossibly large. She hoists me up so I can rub my fingers across his hard muzzle, play the whiskers like strings on a ukulele. Then under the jaguars leaping above the dance floor. The killing isn’t worrisome to me—the blood is paint, the postures of fear and survival, all posed. The hunter is long dead, too. Back in the Serengeti, a lion carries an antelope in his mouth while a hyena menaces from across the glass case behind my chair. Dik-diks and warthogs edge the display, watching the drama unfold, presumably. The lion is dusty, and there is a cobweb between the “limp” antelope legs. My grandfather saws through his Swiss steak while my grandmother navigates her Monte Cristo into and out of her raspberry jam. She dabs a red spot on her blouse with the corner of her napkin that’s been dipped in her ice water. I get the fisherman’s platter and devour everything but the oysters. We eat languidly, while hundreds of dull eyes look on.

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Monologue by Chelsea Biondolillo

Some girls remember their first time in all kinds of detail: like what song was on the radio and if the guy was wearing cologne and what underwear they had on. I hear them talking in the locker room while they put their eyeshadow back on after PE and recurl their hair. You know, I can’t get my hair to curl right no matter how much hairspray I use? I’ve tried, and it always falls flat by second period. I don’t get foundation either. It looks too thick on me. So when they’re at the mirrors, I don’t have anything ‘constructive to contribute,’ as Mr. Taske says. When they start blabbing about their boyfriends, I just get dressed and hustle out behind the art building for a quick smoke before English. What am I supposed to say when those Barbie girls start gushing about how they finally “went all the way” with some dumb football player? Someday I might just blurt out, “I think mine’s name was Cary, and he pushed me down in the woods.” Wouldn’t that shut them up? I’d like to tell them that: tell them what it feels like to float away while a thing’s done to you, so you don’t have to really remember it. I’d like to watch them turn away from the mirror for a second and see something other than their own glassy eyes. But that’s what Mr. Taske would say is ‘disruptive social behavior.’ It’s not helpful, he says.

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Fishing by Chelsea Biondolillo

Because I could see the over-sized square face of the bus, rounding the corner; because I couldn’t be late to work again; because I had worn tennis shoes and could run; because of all this I sped past the fisherman on the canal at exactly his moment of triumph. Gleaming, swiveling, the carp arced on the end of his hand-tied line. It was majestic, as city fish go, weighty and sleek. The green lurid smell of the water swirled thick around them. His broken smile cracked wide as he held up his prize, spun on his sole-less shoes toward the traffic stopped at the light. I wanted to slow down, admire his catch. I wanted to take his picture, and ask his name. I wanted to know who he was fishing for, but instead, I called out, “¡Que Bonito!” and thought of the time clock. I raced past the school of rush hour drivers. No one honked, no one cheered this miracle: a grand fish–instead of a crooked bike tire or drowned campaign sign–dredged up from the canal. On any other day this stream was just an obstacle to drive over or around. I never looked back to see if his victory remained unwithered. I heaved onto the bus, the doors wheezing closed behind me. Did his smile falter? Turn toward the fish? At work, everyone did the things they did, and nothing at all happened. The next day I came early, but the fisherman was gone.

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