Margo Davis

​Angles
 
Sometimes I am the omniscient overhead camera, sometimes I'm him or me or both of us shot at an angle, any angle. Shoot from the hip, around an elbow. Or I lock eyes with him, wondering. A sweet exchange, empathic, compassionate. Not what it was before. I miss that so I re-examine, looking for some tell, a hint that he too tests the waters. I stretch like putty or blow up up up, a balloon that soon pops, leaving a sticky film I attempt to wipe off as I move on. Nothing to reconsider. Yet later I replay it from every angle.
 
**
 
How I Came to Be at Walmart Superstore          
 
Starting out small enough, just six inches of smooth glimmering foil, blemish-free, I yank. The Dollar Store’s best brand wobbles and warps, the flimsy box losing its shape. So much for a buck twenty-five. The hypnotic shimmer in my grip wrinkles as if sat on. I tear off that part, begin anew, my need for perfection steadying my grip as I unfurl the last bit, about twelve inches that, if need be, I could trim. I decide to, tracing an outline of the maligned box. Tiny blemishes surface, lines one wouldn’t want to discover in a hand mirror. They fracture, spreading like the legendary Cascadia fault. With a steady grip I unfurl sixteen inches along the cleared countertop designated for pure art. Maybe I could frame this, my attempt at human intervention. Just as I turn away, the sheet catches on my sleeve then glides to the floor. Another crease spreads. Scooping up the car keys I head for the door.  
 
**

Mettle
​
From the top of the ladder he says offhandedly, I've been having these blackouts. I say, What? He enunciates like I can't hear him. Fell out of bed the other day. It's then I notice a long Band-Aid across his temple. Just as I rolled over and swung my leg off the side of the bed, I grew dizzy. Hit my head on the corner frame, he shares. Metal, I ask?  He says, What? missing a step.
 
**

How Far One Will Go
 
Too small even for a child's tooth, uneven, not very deep. A mouse attracted to a Golden Delicious that will not hold up to its name? The one carefully chosen in the grocery, without bruises, as if it were all together never touched by anyone except a picker risking the ladder, carefully placing it in the grocery just as I placed it on my countertop with one hand. I even rotated it a bit so that it's prettier side faces me whenever I walk in or out of the room. Its other side was a faint yellow-red phase I would eat soon enough. Will I? Will I excise indentation and enjoy the remainder? Perhaps the nibble is not a mouse bite. Had I bumped it with the tip of a steak knife? The scissors perhaps. Or did I clip it with the edge of a carton? This is how one tricks the self into accepting less than what one envisions. Not self-delusion so much as a forethought compromise. And if I cut into it, bite only to discover there is a deep bruise, near the core— what then?
 
**
 
Going Live
 
Alan clasps my elbow as we stumble through two blocks of idling cars approaching the cul de sac where the fried chicken magnate resides. It’s Christmas week, when our local electric provider doubles its annual profits. Twelve floodlights face off like sentry men. Everyone's here or was earlier or what's wrong with them. Divine excess without Mardi Gras beads or pitch-imperfect brass bands. Elvis croons about his blue-blue-blue. Alan squeezes my elbow, stabilizing me, otherwise I would tip into the floodlights, into faux snow, into cars bleached white as Pensacola beach had once been. All the lit affiliates are here. Three-quarters of the locals, lit as well. A local station pans the crowds, lingering on us, the middle-aged couple strolling rather than revving our engine. We stare back at a bulky camera lens. You're luminous, Alan says. You’re blindsided, I laugh. First date recorded live, I add. Smacking his forehead, he mimics Joe from accounting tipping back on a barstool during the 10 o’clock news: That Alan, wrecking his marriage for an older woman.
 
**
​
What I recall from a four-hour Alzheimer’s exam
 
is only the strain, what wrestled me to the tile floor, like the relationship between six random words. Or not. What’s ODD about this grouping, they intimate? Or being asked to repeat eight unrelated words heard maybe a half hour before. One slides off the cliff while another dangles in the overgrown shrub, making me childish at best as I stare openly at the tail of a g, maybe a y. Why does any of this matter? Oh. I’d forgotten, my matter, grey matter, is why these serious games continue. Per my request. Don’t I know enough to tell what I don’t / won’t want to hear? An earful of assaults in half or slant rhyme times me out long enough to regroup for more abuse. If I refuse? I’m worse off than anyone thought.
 
**
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Margo Davis defends writing as a socially acceptable form of talking to herself. Perhaps subject to what’s said. Or overheard.~  A three-time Pushcart nominee, her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Passager, Verse Daily, Equinox, Panoply, and numerous anthologies including Dos Gatos Press's recent Notes of Light and Dark. Her chapbook Quicksilver is available on Amazon. Uncoupling (LULP) is to appear in early 2026, seven come eleven. Poised for her spring fellowship in the Pacific Northwest, Margo hovers in Houston, packed bag beneath the bed.