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Kristen Yawitz

Embodied, Embedded

 

I.

Take two fingers. Cover baby fat apogee cheeks. There’s Irma in her wedding photo her first snapshot post-maternity ward there’s Irma in 1956 a secretary a bride of Jesus there’s Irma in the basement of a friend’s house during a sleepover allegedly parents upstairs guardian sister Imelda a cross town apartment hot smoking or having milk and bread and ibuprofen another think another glass of water.

II.

The boy 17 has a ring sized to fit age 13/14 girls (two) ordered not to associate hand Irma her first ever double-stacked dose in a pink pill stamped with an arrow and a heart necklace or maybe a cross a unicorn? edging out of Irma’s eighth grade photo into the basement of her friend’s house allegedly parents upstairs Irma’s hair drapes like seaweed just beginning to stiffen.

III.

Counsel would like to note that isthmus of dark hair extended over the girl’s brow well before my client and her co-defendant were ever in the vicinity of oversize orange shirts.

IV.

Irma’s first-ever ring sized to fit young girls in her throat. Shadow cuts bias. Surprise! A crease divides parents upstairs Imelda a cross town from three age 13/14 girls in a downstairs bathroom. Rose period Picassos just beginning to stiffen.

Shoulders feint lip gloss breaking the bounds of strict naturalism. Not all dealers study a market the way the boy 17 has become a connoisseur.

V.

Irma’s tremolo smile. At its edges, two tiny caves you could spelunk. Across her throat surprising that premature crease inside that weird feeling.

VI.

Find the vanishing point.

VII.

Experience Irma as real.

VIII.

Stumbling block: if “Irma” exists as an independent, separate self, then where is that self? Point to Irma.

IX.

Irma vomits all over the walls and floor of a downstairs bathroom. Two girls ordered not to associate with upstairs parents 911 emergency rooms Imelda call the connoisseur for advice.

Bath and milk and bread and ibuprofen and lots of water and to this the girls add pot because they’ve heard people take it for cancer.

X.

Analyze the entity known as “sister guardian” into constituent parts.

Analyze upstairs parents.

XI.

Entering and emerging high lucid Irma says tell my family and friends.

Her right eye rounder and higher than her left. A shade pouch beneath her lower lip.

XII

Render Irma’s vital parts.


Kristen Yawitz lives in Belmont, CA.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gypsy, effing, Five Fingers Review, Xantippe and SHAMPOO.  She teaches writing at Notre Dame de Namur University.

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