90 days of fiancés: #1
Tin weather hissed, beaded bodies
pressed against the windowpanes.
The baby forced his fists
against the glass. I asked my fiancé
if he called upon God
to crack the sky
and spill water like venom
dripping from the serpent’s tongue
He knew the baby and I
wanted to go outside. I told him
the rain’s your fault. I asked him
Why did you do this to us?
90 days of fiancés: #8
When I was born,
a god painted me from teeth
to toes with a sable brush;
a casing sealed to the skin.
But with every joke cracked
by my brothers about a spotless
self, the paint peeled like sunburn,
curling at the seams in uneven
ribbons. After the wedding,
I stripped the paint
in sheaths, layer by layer,
until my newly made body was bare.
The sound of uncovering,
in front of a strange but familiar
deity, drowned the noise
of my former family.
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella (she/her) is a writer and editor living in Philadelphia. She edits HOOT Review, Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, and was an editor for Lunch Ticket from 2015 to 2017. Jane-Rebecca is the author of the flash fiction collections, Better Bones (Thirty West Publishing House) and Thirst and Frost (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), as well as the poetry collections, Long Island Sad Poems (Serotonin Press), Eleven Hundred (Really Serious Lit), and others. She works as a paralegal for an immigration law firm.
