grandma, in the kitchen. grandpa’s
stirring some kind of bedroom murmur.
*
a white skinned doll with blue yarn hair
and a star stamped below her left eye.
*
someone stars a church service
and I stick my tongue out.
*
mom jabbing which
dad mirrors with more success.
*
my sister
fat blobs of fear wobbling ruddy
into a pink collar.
*
the sky above our house is gray endless.
a bird breaks, black smudge, and caws.
our front yard tree is spindly, like the mother
from Coraline.
*
ripped fir-mimicked paper, pile of ruins;
a tape ball family; a tree with no feet.
*
my sister crawls into bed with me.
I have a dream dad slaps her so hard
she shatters into the glass coffee table.
Bri Gonzalez is a Chicana/e queer poet and an MFA candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder. Their writing focuses on their experience with bipolar disorder, mythology, and how their favorite media betrays them. She enjoys befriending the magpies at her local park, bothering her void cat, Dahlia, and playing D&D. Check out Bri’s work at Not Deer Magazine, Janus Literary, The Raven Review, forthcoming in Crow & Cross Keys, and more available on their website, bgwriting.org.
Angel Rust 