Short Bios

The writers live in gingerbread brownstones
with their husbands and children and shitty cats, with herds
of just the shittiest cats on earth. Otherwise
their life is perfect. They dress like mimes
and spatchcock chickens
just so they can say they spatchcock chickens.
With the heels of their hands, they press
down on the bird until it lays flat,
and while it roasts in butter they draw
their husbands over for deep kisses,
running their fingers down their spines
until they, too, open like books.

The artists live and work in Montreal and Milan,
always between two cities because their lives cannot be contained
by a single place. Don't tell them but
once I built a treehouse between two trees—
big mistake.

The dead live in the mist
and in middle names and recipes
for holiday bread made with yolk—rich dough and golden raisins.
But the kids don't want the bread/ won't even try it/ they want Heath bar cookies.
And honestly, it was a big ask
expecting them to love the holiday bread like you loved it.
The recipe card is waxy with fat and its familiar
penmanship is a time machine that makes you grasp at the mist,
grasp for their faces, their wigs, their old cars,
but the dead don’t remember anything either and now you have to bash
up the Heath bars and the kitchen's a mess already.

The witches live alone in undisclosed locations.
They stomp down the stairs, immersed in their work.
People hate them because they want
to be them. Not true, you say,
but your jealousy emits a tone so low
it’s like weather.

The demons live in the ceiling fans
whirling percussively above beds
just like yours.
You stare up, convinced
the blades are going to spin right off their axis and behead you.
And while you worry, a legion of demons
descends. They rile up your eczema
and whisper things
like your girlfriend won't love you forever
because you're exactly
as mediocre as you fear
and your timeline is just a string
of stumbles.
Then your old best friend who lives six time zones away texts
I'm walking alone on the nature trail and farted so loud
it startled a bunch of birds out of a tree
and you laugh so hard it's an exorcism.