It's Always Good To Run Here At

It’s always good to run here at 
the end of a bad day and find 
her, absent-mindedly twirling
the end of her once-long, sawn-off 
tail and pretending to read. It’s
always good to see her smile and
offer me a hug and a beer.
Even though it’s winter, she wears
a sleeveless dress like the Queen’s, pale
yellow, sequinned, and velvet gloves 
that go over her elbows. The 
gloves make her fumble with her beer,
but fumbling makes her fetching and 
many of the locals eye her
hopefully. Sure enough, one of 
them walks up with swagger and a 
grin and he says Aw shucks, as though 
she’d started a conversation. 
Please please please ignore him, I think. 
But Miss Crocodile can’t resist
attention and when he says she’s 
enigmatic, then waits for her 
to reply, she falls right into
the trap and lowers her heavy 
lidded eyes, black-lined and swept with 
irridescent blue. ‘How’d you get 
to be so smart, sweet heart,’ he says, 
turning her book over to squint
at the title. ‘I always go 
for the ones who make me think.’ Well,
I think he makes me squirm, and not 
in a good way. ‘Excuse me,’ I 
say, grabbing Miss Crocodile by 
her gloved arm. We get up so fast 
her pearls swing round and whup Mr.
Multisyllables in the face. He turns
red and says ‘Stupid bitches.’ I
guide us to the ladies’ and hope 
she didn’t hear that. Sometimes it 
hurts a lot to have your heart kept 
safe. I dare say mine has known some 
awful pounding. ‘I’ll never be 
hurt again,’ I remind her, ‘But 
it won’t stop some from trying.’ At
first I think I see tears in her 
eyes, but then I realise it’s smoke 
curling up from her nostrils and 
the corners of her mouth. ‘You don’t
worry about me, darlin’,’ she 
says. ‘I’m part dragon, mama’s side
of the family.’ Her fingers are 
smoking too, blue-tipped like her eyes.
I laugh harder than I ever
have, until my sides ache. But we 
wait an hour and twenty seven
minutes before we leave the room.

It's The Saltwater Ones You Have

“It’s the saltwater ones you have
to watch out for. They feed on tears,
even if they’ve been dry for years,”
says Miss Crocodile. She drains her
glass, orders two more and pushes
one across to me. “They have good
memories.” I tell her I made
a serious mistake, thinking
I was supposed to steer clear of
hunters, the clumsy ones with bad
vision and good guns. No one warned
me about crocodiles, about
camouflage. I try to hug my
tail, then remember it’s gone. I’m
stupid, I say. She puts her long
snout against my cheek. “You’ll never
be safe once they come sniffing,” she
says. “They know where you live.” She claims
she once knew one: near-bright, ill-bred
and good at hiding everything
from booze to the tryst of the day.
I’ve listened to the story a
dozen times and never tire
of hearing her triumph, the way
she changes the ending each time
so her escape looks better and
smarter. She is no fool, not at
all. She came close to being turned
into a handbag, almost wound
up as a pair of boots. My bruised
ego is nothing compared to
that. Her eyes are shining. I am
her triumph, too. That’s why I’m here.
She has another lager in
front of me and urges me to
drink up. “The night is long, but so
is the road ahead of us.” She
slips something sharp-edged into my
pocket and hoists herself from the
barstool. “I gave him back the part
of his brain I’d excised and soon
after, we split. Enough’s enough.
Come, let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

The Zucchini Wanted to be a Lover

The zucchini wished to be a

lover. The others (some mushrooms,

bell peppers and an eggplant) thought

it outrageous. ‘But she’s lovely,’

said the zucchini, dreaming of

sweating her in olive oil.

He loved the way she sighed as she

cooked. He loved her deft hands tying 

her apron around the gentle 

curve of her waist. He loved to watch 

her roll her eyes when she tasted 

sauce and knowingly added salt, 

pepper, thyme. He thought his desire 

simple and good. He wanted her

sighs to be about him, about 

the way he might make her feel: joy 

creasing her brow in the night, sweet

comfort opening her eyes to 

him in the morning. What more could

he want in life other than to

love her? On the cutting board lay

pieces of the others, silent  

and dreamless. ‘Her skin is smooth and

excitable,’ the zucchini 

marvelled. He could not stop looking. 

The steepest hills in the Prosecco di Valdobbiadene

She has nothing better to do. 

She sips once, twice, does not stop. A

drift of bubbles clusters at the 

rim, slides to the bottom of the

flute. She hears a burst of peach and

lemon: ‘It’s not that I’m ashamed 

of you.’ She waits for the words to

trail. Another sip. Undertones

of spring flowers. Notes of pear and 

melon. ‘It’s just that maybe my 

standards are higher.’ This feels crisp 

and clean with nice acidity 

and a refreshing dry finish.

It’s the complicated ones that

always interest her. She should stop

now before she gets used to it.

One Morning She Woke Up to Find

One morning she woke up to find

she was a dragon. It was kind

of a surprise. She held her breath,

exhaled slowly and gasped out sharp

little bursts of flame. She enjoyed 

that. She also liked the steam that 

curled from her nose when she thought of 

hateful things. It was much better 

than what she was used to. Her skin 

was like armour and she liked that 

best of all. At the office she 

practiced being impervious, 

reading mail sent by bad people 

with bad intent. The scent of hell

rose up behind her eyes. This was

new and exciting. “You are my 

one and only,” read a letter

that used to make her dizzy, but 

this time the words and the rage and

the screen and everything else in 

the room melted into a lake

of fire. She did not feel a thing. 

The Last Night of Our Trip Farther

The last night of our trip farther

south and west than either of us
had been, we ate by the side of
the road and talked about revenge.
Lila said You love revenge. Not
true, I said. I am too proud to
spend time on people who done me
wrong. You would if you cared about
them, she said and I told her I
would think about it. Revenge must
be important to you if you
think about it, she insisted,
taking a last bite of pie. I
did think about it, rolling it
in my head and savouring it.
I decided getting even
without guilt (which is useless) or
anger (which is gauche) is fine, no
matter what I said to Lila.
She then said When it comes to love,
you’ll do just about anything
for it. You take the cake. True or
not, I pushed away my supper.
I hated a grand thing like love
getting mixed up with shame. Lila
said You can’t beg for love like a
dog with her eyes piercing mine and
all I could say was I knew how 

to serve up shame if I wanted. 

The simple act of living well
would do it right. Her eyes narrowed.
Someday she will be the one to
say to me Revenge becomes you.

I Wait in a Line Outside for Green Beer

 I Wait in a Line Outside For Green Beer

I said ‘Leprechaun, why do we
try too hard, you and I?’ He said
‘O does it grieve me, woman,
that you do not use the past tense.’

I wait in a line outside for
green beer along with what looks like
everyone else in the city
on a night, still winter, that must
be in the mid-seventies. “Dress
for me,” read his note, hand-written
and sultry in a way that makes
me expect something, so (for him)
it is a twenties’ dress with a
feather skirt, a rope of pearls, no
stockings and insolent-heeled shoes,
the kind with expectations of
their own. (They are known to dangle
from the toe or inflict other
good dangers if they are noticed.)
A year ago I was here, in
the same dress and shoes, with Brenda.
She ordered drinks, then turned to me.
‘Why so sad? You look good enough
to eat.’ She spread her arms wide. ‘You
could have anyone in this place.
You could have anyone.’ She died
last fall after the hurricane,
before anyone, otherwise
she would be here with me tonight
to scold, to drink enough to see
leprechauns, to make them jealous
and then laugh as we walked them home.