Aldona Dziedziejko

​Rare Sour Animals 
 
BC. Before cellphones. Row houses shedding plaster, clouds slapping rough skies. She got yanked by the shoulder & spanked, dragged into the vestibule  while we stood there, dumb dew worms squirming inside our pockets. We’d lured this friend into late afternoon play. We heard bawling through an open window—maybe it was some other schoolgirl, but same story, we called her stoopid as a donkey, whipped each other with weeping willow sprigs, pantomimed parenthood. Late summer, in early morning’s flat cool light, I sat on a bee. A flashing throb. The bee, spent, writhed away, trailing innards. Her lancet, still in my foot. 
 
AD. After digital. The snapshot goes around the village chat. A warning. The wolf lurking around our yards. I await a muscular creature with cunning eyes. Something worthy of fear.  The animal’s puny, the colour of dishrags. Tottering. Half lidded eyes, half starved. 

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​
Sandwich
 
They call us the sandwich generation. Stacked between ailing parents and young kids of our own. We’re the bread. Slices bookending bitter demands. The sour sweet seafoam in yeast, rising. But really, I feel more like butter spread thin. Better yet, mustard made tang: a seed not unlike such miniscule planet to hold us. What kind of sandwich? No one specifies. A BLT? That nightshade tongue soft on bacon crackle. In any case, they say I’m living in-between. The rootstocked fist of a lettuce, the open eyes of Swiss cheese?
             
At the 11th hour, Earl Montagu of Sandwich called for roast beef between bread slices. To keep one hand free for gambling. Cards, toast, lice and bad wigs. Whatever–it happened over three hundred years ago. I bet he didn’t have to change diapers.    
                        
A friend once confessed: I dreamt I was homeless throwing sandwiches at passing cars. It’s an Aries thing. A desire to shirk responsibilities. An astral sandwich is a night crammed with stars, moons salting us to sleep. Do angels eat sandwiches? My little one doesn’t. She just eats bread. Only Mortadella. Only cheese. Never together.

Her bright face squeezed in my hands, she is a sunny psalm. Heavenly swaths of sourdough. What is life but all living things mewling for food, eager faces begging through my deck’s French doors. Baguette? Croissant. Now we’re talking. Jam lots of butter into everything. I don’t long for lobbing sandwiches across the road, but I do long to sit in a patisserie, legs crossed, add a friend—lounging Paris bums, all the days…down on earth. Keep the dough aerated, patted, rising, feeding a crowd. What about that longing? Nah. Maybe I’d rather be shorting. A short order cook, hand to mouth, cow to table. One thing: I will never use shortening. Pleasure? Living inside my home-cooked hours. 

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Ghosts and Other Domestic Animals
 
My language is full of them. An errant charge runs through it. All is deceptive. Behind the Iron Curtain, even animals were reassigned. Our eagle lost its crown, my father’s father swallowed bullets, worked his fingers to the bone setting balloons on fire, digging holes. Our moon got its pockmarks dodging comets. That’s love. Rocks flung at the skin of night, mother-of-pearl. One dawn my lawn so spectral I mistook it for floodlights. My eyes half-moon. My joints are loose or my fascia, too tight. This Halloween my fingers slow. Greying human skulls and femurs rest crosswise on our frost-silvered porch. Consider joy. We drape sheets over our heads, boo like ghosts. I am on my knees, Crawl, horsie, crawl. My girl squeals. I am a beast of many tongues, gill to lung. 
 
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Escape Plan

(found prose in a home developer’s brochure)

Thoughtful design vanities. These images are not to be construed as promises. Discover Wolfberry. A charming bridge, a tranquil pond, warm wood soft-close. Welcome to our generic guidebook—subject to variation. A future home for your child. Experience the magic of high-arc pull-down chrome quartz toilet.

Alter, amend, revise.

Stand the test of time. Explore options such as detachable seats, stone, brick defects. Sharp kitchen islands fostering a sense of belonging and spiritual growth. Convenience store filled with long-lasting protection. Our signature on your journey.
 
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*Source material: Discover Wolfberry Aspen (https://wolfberryaspen.ca/). Extracted, cut, and re-sequenced.

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Molotov Mixology
 
Rations on Saturday mornings at the brew shack. Sweaty pee-sample beer at noon. Drunks pepper the floor: in situ sculptures, reclining comrades, mammals in shut-down. Bored, us kids run through the pines, leap, throw pinecones at the bums. Will they move? Then the cull. Police issue bulldozers, push this way and that. We giggle. No one sees us. The warm sun drying needle tips, beach sand kissing tourists’ boots. Nowadays, I return for photo ops, teal fishing boats, my dress a mermaid hugging Baltic waves. We tip our botanical cocktails at passersby. Crème de menthe Neptune martinis, trident stir sticks, sea salt rim. Servers nod and smile. Offer forks for pizza slices. Don’t you wish for a Molotov? Corrugated aluminum, hot tin vodka. Dash of benzene, crushed glass for a dead-on twinkle. 
 
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Aldona Dziedziejko is an immigrant writer and educator living in Clearwater Country, Canada. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in CV2, PRISM international, The Capilano Review, subTerrain, Poetry Is Dead, Fiction Southeast, and Pulp Literature, among others. Her work has been recognized by the Lina Chartrand Poetry Award, the Lush Triumphant Literary Prize, and the Magpie Poetry Contest, and has been shortlisted for the Disquiet Prize, the Jon Whyte Memorial Essay Award, and Fractured Lit’s Fractured & Fused Prize.