My father dances to women singing jazz, black birds and blue jays. I dance to the sound of his footsteps and stand on his black penny loafers. We don't talk about my parents' childhoods except for Midwest winters, but I wonder if they played jazz on vinyls, what it sounds like when it gets scratched if the sound still echoes. My mother doesn't like jazz or poetry. She listens to Sheryl Crow on broken CD players that skip my favorite parts in the summer, and I want to sing to sunshine and sadness, but my mother says I'm no good. So I listen to Alicia Keys on my sister's portable CD player that isn't broken and pretend she is singing to me, calling my braided hair beautiful, while I wait for the click of my father's heels back from work. My teacher says she doesn't trust the new ipods, says they can't sound like records on Sunday afternoons. It's just not possible that something so tiny can hold so much. My father doesn't know that Uncle Kracker's song Follow Me is about adultery so I download it along with Sheryl Crow's album, but I sing to both when no one is watching. Sophie Coats was born in Texas, but raised a Jersey girl. Junior year of high school, she traded out public school life for the boarding school experience at Interlochen Arts Academy where she studied creative writing. She was awarded a gold key for flash fiction and a gold key for poetry in the Scholastic Art and Writing awards. Her work can also be found in the Interlochen Review. Art by Sarah Little.
Tag: Interlochen Arts Academy
Caribou
He, a practiced piper
Poked holes in my windpipe
Teased notes of seduction
From this homemade flute
Caught you with a butterfly net
Weaved from my hair
And locked you in my ribcage
The bone splinters keep you
Still
Check the back alley dumpster
His drivethrough graveyard
Take his leftovers
I
Am his leftovers
Give him my skull
So he’ll stop asking for head
He never looks down anyways
Wrap yourself in my hide
To mask your scent
Between subway rides
And under park benches
When he asks for your tongue
And he will ask for your tongue
Cut out mine
Keep yours locked behind
Teeth stained yellow and red
Empty my stomach of the acid
Forced down my throat
Swallowed by bruised lips
Fashion a drawstring pouch
Tie it shut with braided ligaments
Run
In case he catches up
Pull the pins out of my ovaries
Don’t forget to throw
Before they explode
Into ovum shrapnel
That scared him more than me
Bind his wrists with my small intestine
After the explosion
Set fire to the kindling that was my hair
Carve the fat from my chest
Marinate it in the remnants
Of my menstrual blood
And make him swallow
By Emily Boyle
Emily Boyle lives in Beaver Island, Michigan, and attends Interlochen Arts Academy as a senior.
Art by Jules Ventre