​Shaun R. Pankoski 

​Eve

A woman from class gives me a ride to the bus stop. She tells me that she used to be a nun back in Chicago. In fact, she met her husband there. They were both in the same order--he for twelve years, she for six. Once they did a play together where she was a fairy who seduces a Red Cross knight. She left the order. He left later. Now they live here and have three kinds of apple trees on their property.
 
**

Gloria

Gloria is fifty-eight. She was married at seventeen. She met her husband at a place where kids hang out, drinking cokes. He was twenty-five, she was sixteen. Her father had just taken a new bride and didn't have the time or money to spend on Gloria's future. Gloria never made a single purchase in her married life. If she wanted a pair of shoes, she went to the store with her husband and he picked them out. Twenty-four years after they were married, he woke up on a Wednesday morning and told Gloria he didn't want to be married anymore. He was gone by Saturday.

**

Marilyn

My friend married a man who constructs furniture in the shape of women. The first time I come to visit, she shows me some of his work. In the middle of the living room is a large, pale blue cabinet. At the front are two round, wooden shapes, each with a doorbell apparatus attached to their centers. She says, “Pick one.” I press the buzzer on the right and a latch opens, causing the breast/door to move aside. A tin heart is revealed, rigged to dance to and fro to a music box playing somewhere deep inside the piece. “Good,” she says. “You picked the right one.”

**

After Marilyn Leaves

I push the left buzzer. Again the breast/door opens, revealing a set of false teeth, jumping and snapping. Another door, lower down and centered, opens on its own. A gaudy, plastic Virgin Mary looks up at me. I think of my grandparents, affixing one just like this to the dashboard of their Buick, for protection.

**
​
I Didn't Catch Her Name

The woman with her head wrapped in tinfoil, walking quickly toward me, is crazy. When she shouts in my face, I am startled. The hair stands up on my arms. I stop. This makes her stop. Because I did not quite understand what she said, I say, “I'm sorry?” She repeats herself, quietly this time, holding her gaze and wavering only slightly. What else can I do but agree? I break her stare and walk quickly away. When I reach my bus stop and I'm standing still, heart pounding, I realize she isn't crazy. Not. At. All.

**
​
Shaun R. Pankoski (she/her) is a poet most recently from Volcano, Hawaii. A retired county worker and two time breast cancer survivor, she has lived on both coasts as well as the Midwest as an artist’s model, modern dancer, massage therapist and honourably discharged Air Force veteran. Her poems have appeared in several literary magazines, including Gargoyle, Sheila-na-Gig, Gyroscope and MacQueen's Quinterly.