Muriel’s vintage cocktail dress. Mint-green fabric—chiffon, maybe? Charmeuse? I wrecked it skinning my knee. That night, my blood was pink as Boone’s Strawberry Hill. After years balled up the corner of a box, the dress was crinkly as a fan. The stain of my fall: rusted. When her parents unpacked the boxes, I almost inherited it. But without her there to patch up my knee anymore, when her dad held it out to me, all I saw was a mint ghost. I looked right through that filmy cloth—organza, that’s what she’d said it was—and said, Burn it.
Allie Marini Batts holds degrees from both Antioch University of Los Angeles and New College of Florida, meaning she can explain deconstructionism, but cannot perform simple math. Her work has been a finalist for
Best of the Net and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is managing editor for the
NonBinary Review and Zoetic Press, and has previously served on the masthead for
Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, The Weekenders Magazine, Mojave River Review & Press, and
The Bookshelf Bombshells. Allie is the author of the poetry chapbooks
You Might Curse Before You Bless (ELJ Publications, 2013),
Unmade & Other Poems (Beautysleep Press, 2013), and
This Is How We End (forthcoming 2014, Bitterzoet.) Find her
Facebook and @kiddeternity.
Artist: Brittanie Pendleton
Muriel’s vintage cocktail dress. Mint-green fabric—chiffon, maybe? Charmeuse? I wrecked it skinning my knee. That night, my blood was pink as Boone’s Strawberry Hill. After years balled up the corner of a box, the dress was crinkly as a fan. The stain of my fall: rusted. When her parents unpacked the boxes, I almost inherited it. But without her there to patch up my knee anymore, when her dad held it out to me, all I saw was a mint ghost. I looked right through that filmy cloth—organza, that’s what she’d said it was—and said, Burn it.
Love all the sensory deets here Alli. Yay!