POETRY - ISSUE FOUR
The Tax Preparer
LAUREN WINCHESTER
She looked at the forms and said money.
A baby cried.
(Dividends and interest and exclusions)
She said money
and typed furiously on a calculator.
She said money
and gold coins foamed from her mouth.
She squinted at statements
and her tongue unrolled from her head
and licked MONEY onto the desk.
(Taxable amount tax withheld tax due)
She said money.
She would not stop saying
money.
(Please check this box and leave line 9 blank)
I said money back at her
and watched her head deflate.
I stood in the desk and yelled money
as birds descended from the ceiling
and squawked and chattered
money money money money.
Anti-Mimesis
After I read Oedipus Rex
I went looking for gold pins,
and I found a shiny pair
and stuck them in my eyes
in order to experience empathy. The dull
ends wobbled from the sockets,
my personal quivering compass needles.
I followed where they pulled
and found myself on the top
of a mountain. I lay supine
on the peak as if it were a fulcrum
to the lever of my spine. I tottered
in the wind. The rock rasped and squeaked.
I spun thin air into gauze and hung a scrim
near the sun; I sucked heat from the sky;
the atmosphere swallowed sound when I called out
for a shepherd to lead me home.
Lauren Winchester is pursuing an MFA in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in The Philadelphia Review of Books.
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