UAB Digital Commons (Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham)

Soderlind, Lori

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 05 Article 34 
2005 
66 Signs that the Former Student who Invited You to Dinner is 
Trying to Seduce You 
Lori Soderlind 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Soderlind, Lori (2005) "66 Signs that the Former Student who Invited You to Dinner is Trying to Seduce 
You," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 05, Article 34. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol05/iss2005/34 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
Lori Soder/ind 
66 SIGNS THAT THE FORMER STUDENT WHO INVITED You TO 
DINNER Is TRYING TO SEDUCE You 
1. She is an older student, and you have heard somewhere 
that she is married but you have never seen her husband and 
she has never worn a ring. 
2. When she invited you to dinner, she didn't ask if you 
planned to bring a friend. 
3. You did ask her if there was something you could bring, 
wine or a cheesecake for instance. She said, "just yourself." 
4. As you think of this now, dressing to go to your former 
student's apartment, you struggle seemingly without reason to 
decide what pair of shoes is most appropriate. Chunky boots? 
Skateboard punk sneakers with broken laces? Your "Jesus san-
dals" with the leather straps that show your, well, your sort of 
cute toes? You choose professorial loafers and hope that they 
don't look too grave. 
5. You wonder why you are wondering about this. 
6. When you arrive at her apartment, the Billie Holiday disc 
is already playing. The apartment is well appointed, though 
small, and immaculately kept. The ceilings and doors and win-
dows are all very high and the room is airy; the family photo-
graphs are all professional portraits. The carpet is plush. You 
sense that you are impressed. 
7. The very short tour she gives of her apartment begins in 
the bedroom. In fact it involves looking at the unusual door to 
the bathroom, which is off the bedroom, and this leaves you 
standing in the bedroom right next to the bed. And you notice 
the bed, that it is neatly made without a wrinkle in the covers, 
very clean and not slept in. You notice the bed is the primary 
feature of the bedroom, that it faces out through open French 
doors, across the living room to the very tall windows, so that if 
you were lying in it you would have a fifth floor view of the 
lights of this small city. And it occurs to you that you could 
walk naked without a care in the bedroom with the French 
doors open and the view of the city staring back at you because 
the city is such a quiet and empty place at night that there 
45 
Soderlind 
would be no one out there to see you. You could be jumping on 
that bed naked and no one would see. You know that no one 
would see because you know the city is empty because in three 
years living there and teaching college classes there you have 
met so few people that you really care for, and you have been a 
little lonely as a result. 
8. You realize you are staring at the bed, and that she is no 
longer talking about the bathroom. 
9. You comment out loud about the view of the city through 
the tall windows across the living room and you quickly head 
for them and stare out. When you notice she is no longer stand-
ing near you, you go off toward the kitchen, where she has 
begun preparing a meal. 
10. She slides a wine bottle down the counter and casually 
hands you the corkpuller as if opening the bottle has been your 
role in the kitchen with her for seven years or more of happy 
marriage. She asks, as she places the corkpuller in your hand, 
"Would you?" 
11. You do. 
12. The wine is cheap and from her native country. She 
laments that there are so few wines from her native country 
available in yours. You remember that when the whole class 
(you invited them all, not just her) came to your house for din-
ner you served them soda. In plastic cups. You fill the glasses 
with the cheap foreign wine. 
13. You ask her about the exam she had in a music theory 
class that caused her to cut the last day of your own class so 
that she could study. You deliberately use the word "cut" and 
tap your professorial loafer as you say this, briefly restoring 
your sense of control. You remember that you are a mere 
adjunct professor and that she is a returning student very close 
to your age and she is not saying any of the self-conscious 
things you would be saying if you were cooking in front of 
someone else. 
14. You remember that you are never really in control, not 
even in the classroom. 
15. You notice her legs and wonder if she wore shorts for a 
reason, since it is not very hot outside, and then you notice her 
shoes. They are not loafers. They are sandals. They show the 
tips of her little, painted toes. 
16. Her toes wiggle and you look somewhere else immedi-
ately. 
46 
memoir 
17. She reveals that her husband lives in Chicago, which you 
know to be about a thousand miles away. 
18. You feel somehow embarrassed that you forgot about the 
husband. You consider that maybe they just don't believe in 
wearing rings; now that she mentions him you remember the 
husband from a class discussion. And with that memory the 
whole scene changes. You discreetly rub your eyes with the 
thumb and index finger of one hand and try to restore a sense 
of reality to the situation. Reality is really nicely dull. You hope 
you have not been sending her inappropriate signals; perhaps 
she sensed your tension from the moment you came in and 
stared at her bed, you creep. You are relieved and a little embar-
rassed to realize you misunderstood what you were not sure 
you understood in the first place, let's just forget it. 
19. You glance at the unslept in bed that is partly visible 
from the kitchen, like a leg glimpsed through a half-open door, 
and you rub your eyes again. You were her teacher, forgodsake! 
20. She says as she stirs at the stove that her marriage is 
rather unconventional. 
21. She begins telling an interesting story about how the fac-
ulty of the women's studies department, in which she is a 
major, is self-conscious about the reputation that all women's 
studies majors are lesbians and that the chair is thrilled when-
ever married women come into the program; they like to trot 
them out at functions. 
22. You wonder if she even knows you are a lesbian, much 
less someone she could be setting up for some kind of tawdry 
lust-filled thing you keep realizing you are trying not to think 
about. You think, "of course she doesn' t know!" You never men-
tioned it, after all. You feel great walls of sexual ambiguity 
growing right up around you and you sit at the kitchen table 
and cross your legs and swing your loafer. You feel almost 
smug. You are so mysterious. 
23. She is still stirring and not looking up and she says, what 
a riot that women's studies chair is, presuming a woman is het-
erosexual just because she's married. 
24. You swing your loafer faster. 
25. " ... because even my husband knows that I am a lesbian," 
she is saying, as she stirs. 
26. You nod your head thoughtfully and your loafer drops 
and as she turns to look at you, her expression sort of suggests, 
"could anyone doubt it?" She waits for you to look equally 
47 
Soderlind 
dumbfounded. She waits for you to shake your head at how 
crazy it is to think any woman anywhere could possibly not be 
a lesbian. She waits for you to agree with her that every woman 
everywhere should know there's nothing like being with anoth-
er woman baby, yeah baby, like you and me baby right here. 
Right now. Let's go. 
27. You ask her if she watched the recent political convention 
on TV. You suck down a mouthful of wine. 
28. She returns to her cooking. 
29. The plates are on the small table in the kitchen where 
you have been sitting while she cooks. She has remembered 
that you are a vegetarian and has made a creamy meatless 
meal. It is fine. The sun goes down and she lights a large candle 
in molded glass. 
30. You keep trying to talk about politics. The conversation 
keeps drifting back to female sexuality. 
31. You repeatedly surprise yourself by being so candid with 
a former student about female sexuality. You wonder if she has 
noticed that you are no longer sounding like a professional edu-
cator, but more like a life guard at an all-lesbian beach party. 
You keep trying to suppress unexpected references to casual 
sex. 
32. She tells you a story about a gay man she knows who 
spent six months in Italy and had sex twice a week with a 
stranger he met in a bar who spoke no English and her friend 
speaks no Italian but somehow, she isn't sure how they 
arranged it, they just knew that twice a week they would meet 
and go home with each other and fuck. 
33. She asks if you think women can just do it like that. You 
know, just fuck. Without strings. 
34. It is clue number 33 that really gets you thinking. 
35. "The Italians just elected a whole new parliament, didn't 
they?" you say. 
36. Yes. Well. She says she doesn't really think sex can be 
that anonymous for women. It's always necessary for women to 
talk, at least eventually. Do you agree? 
37. In your heart, you know that you do not agree; you 
know that there are women who make a hobby of seduction 
and probably put lipstick hashmarks on their bathroom mirrors 
to tally up every trick they can get in and out of their bed with-
out speaking even once. But you do not say this. You begin to 
explain instead that you actually feel strongly that casual sex is 
48 
memoir TY 
not a feminist value despite the poster campaign of the early 
'90s that showed all those young sleek beautiful pairs of les-
bians climbing over each other in assorted steamy positions, 
and indeed, despite one or two lapses in your own case history 
that you don't care to get into, the point is that you personally 
<1re not very promiscuous, you tell her, and you cross your legs. 
38. She says, "define promiscuous." 
39. You look thoughtful for a moment as you try to get clear 
in your head whether you are having a great debate with an 
intelligent woman or you are being seduced. 
40. When you inevitably ask her to show you one of the 
many interesting essays she has referred to over the past two 
and a half hours of talk about female sexuality, feminist values 
and Italian politics, she rises and hurries into her living room. 
She seems to be spending a long time looking for a book in her 
shelves. When it becomes apparent that she is not coming back 
into the kitchen, you rise and go to the living room to rescue 
yourself from the fidgety wait. She finds the book, and instead 
of returning to the nice square table across which you had been 
talking, she flops herself on the couch, shedding the open-toe 
shoes, tucking her legs up beneath her body. 
41. You stare at the couch for a moment, with her on one 
end, and an empty place at the other end, and the curtain across 
the stage of your life rises to reveal a cast of characters and a 
gallery of scenes of infamous past couch moments. 
42. You take five steps and sit down in a chair next to the 
couch. It is positioned so that you are essentially reading safely 
over her shoulder, looking at the book she has drawn from the 
shelves. This seems natural. You become distinctly aware that 
you are taking special pains to look natural. It is getting harder 
to do. 
43. As you read from the book together your tension 
mounts. But now it is a tension directly related to your growing 
sense that it will be very difficult to get out of this room. 
44. You realize that you have, in fact, decided that you want 
to leave the room, and once you know this you also know that 
you must do it at the soonest possible opportunity. 
45. There is no longer anything casual in the conversation. 
You are clipped, monosyllabic, done. Each word fumbles for the 
clasp on this moment, seeking release. Your lips are pursed, 
like there is something in your mouth you are trying to hide. 
What is in your mouth is your life. You fear for your life. You 
49 -
Soderlind 
slap your thighs emphatically, once and with finality. "Well." 
You smile at her. "My dog will be angry if I don't get home 
soon." 
46. You know that there is something unfortunate about 
your choice of exit lines but you console yourself by remember-
ing that it's true. 
47. You stand. You begin preparations for takeoff. You are 
saying a number of things about the good meal and the nice 
evening and the fine wine from her native country; after two 
sentences you have no idea really what the fuck you are saying 
but you keep making the noise while you wait for her to join in 
the parting rituals and show you to the door. 
48. She stands there in front of you, saying nothing. 
49. As you continue to speak you scan the room and see that 
you are boxed in by the chair, the couch and the standing for-
mer student. You must pass one of these in order to leave. 
SO.You continue finding ways to say thank you and you put 
your hands in your pockets to search, distinctly and perhaps 
even dramatically, for your keys. You jingle the keys in your 
pocket as if it will distract her long enough to step around her. 
You step around her, very carefully avoiding any chance of 
looking into her pouting, expectant face. You turn sharp right at 
the French doors that lead into the very-prominent-bed room, 
where the bed seems to be straining to run after you but can't 
force itself to move, and you pick up speed with the straining 
bed and the pouting former student close behind, and you head 
down the homestretch to the hall. 
51. When you reach the door, you work the lock yourself, 
and you say, "thank you for a very nice evening," as you step 
through the door and then and only then, you turn around. 
52. She smiles faintly and says, "Yes, well, nice talking to 
you." 
53. During the thirty minute drive home from your former 
student's apartment, you find yourself visualizing her naked, 
slightly overweight body, and how it would feel to see her smil-
ing and looking up from a pillow completely thrilled to be 
naked with you at last and how she would be soft to lay down 
on and press hard against and you shake your head fast. 
54. You imagine it again. 
55. It is after midnight when you get home. The dog looks 
up and is completely thrilled to see you, as he is every single 
time you come home, and you begin scratching his ears with 
50 
memoir 
frantic affection and he is dancing like a 60 pound Chihuahua 
on his hind legs with his leash in his mouth and you are about 
to live happily ever after. 
56. The phone rings. 
57. You walk over to the phone on the third ring, pick it up 
and say hello cheerily, and motion to the dog to sit still and stop 
jumping up and down with the leash in his mouth. He sits and 
drops the leash and listens. 
58. "Oh," you say, "hello," as if there was even a remote 
chance you could be surprised, as if you might have even possi-
bly expected it to be someone else. 
59. She tells you that she had been thinking and decided that 
it's best to be honest, rather than to keep this to herself and 
always wonder what you might have said, had she told you; 
that is to say (and here she seems nervous for the first time) she 
wants to tell you that she has developed these feelings ... 
60. You think, "I can handle this. I can handle this." You are 
aware of the possibility of three to five years in a sordid rela-
tionship with a married woman who is a former student all 
because you couldn't handle The Phone Call. 
61. And she proceeds to say sweet and most sincerely flatter-
ing words to you, and you really take it in because her choice of 
words is so original, and kind. You wish that as her writing 
teacher you had been responsible for this proficiency with the 
English language but you know that the outpouring has come 
directly from her own heart and you can take no credit. 
62. So you are not lying when you tell her that you admire 
her for saying what she has said, because it was bold and brave 
and it was said so nicely. But it is equally true that there is no 
possibility for romance here, and that is what you say. 
63. You realize of course that there has already been 
romance. 
64. You talk for a few minutes about why it would be impos-
sible, and she accepts the answer with grace, and you thank her 
one more time for dinner before you say goodnight, and listen 
to her accented voice as it echoes yours, "good night," and you 
hang up the phone. 
65. Do all teachers fantasize that their students will fall in 
love with them? Is this what it is like? As you lay in bed putting 
off sleep for a few minutes of reflection, you wonder how it 
could be, if you're the teacher, that you had actually been so 
dumb as to think she was "just" inviting you to dinner. 
51 
Soderlind 
66. And then you remember that you have always loved 
teaching precisely because, to do it, there is so much you have 
to learn. 
52 


English

66 Signs that the Former Student who Invited You to Dinner is Trying to Seduce You

Kleinberg, J I

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 16 Article 12 
2017 
Door 
J I. Kleinberg 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Kleinberg, J I. (2017) "Door," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 16, Article 12. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol16/iss2017/12 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
21PMS. .
J.I. Kleinberg
Door
after Patrick Lane, Sabi
A sound floats unmoored in my thoughts.
A reflection pauses in the mirror’s crack.
Diverted by radiance, I brush my hair, all shadows.
Memory braids into memory. My skin’s a dreaming cloth.
Each time I hear the echo, I clutch its livid syllable.
The eye listens.
A rectangle of light endures, mute on the easel.
When I was a child, my mother painted a door and walked through.
I stood at the threshold, my face smudged viridian, cadmium, cerulean.
Dangerous ingress, my fingers shaded in blue eclipse.
Beside the path, moss pillows in my mother’s abandoned shoes.
The door between worlds has no hinges.
Withered and empty, my blind bones listen at the sill.


Door

Millman, Ilene

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 16 Article 18 
2017 
Genesis:23 In the Mouth of the Cave 
Ilene Millman 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Millman, Ilene (2017) "Genesis:23 In the Mouth of the Cave," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 
16, Article 18. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol16/iss2017/18 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
33PMS. .
Ilene Millman
Genesis:23 In the Mouth of the Cave 
The offering offered, sacrifice made
it came to pass, a second time we were called
and we rose up and went
 
called not by angel’s voice
but a nurse’s, not unkind, 
not omnipotent either. 
 
Heads bowed beneath our cargo 
of yearning, we held her hands, 
untangling coils of words.
They said not now. They said days.
What did we know of signs
rattles     naked or bent conclusions?
 
Our Thanksgiving dinner lay interrupted 
and the last laugh this: the way we sat eating 
cherry pie       the recipe hers. 


Genesis:23 In the Mouth of the Cave

Nettles, Christina Hall

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 06 Article 11 
2006 
Viceroy 
Christina Hall Nettles 
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 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Nettles, Christina Hall (2006) "Viceroy," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 06, Article 11. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol06/iss2006/11 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
Christina Hall Nettles 
VICEROY 
What is missing from this black box 
Is your six foot frame and affinity 
For expensive polished leather shoes. 
No satin lined suit pockets smell eternally 
Of wintergreen mints and cigarette shards. 
What is missing is the clackety clack of 
False teeth upside down, scaring the grandchildren. 
And I wonder if those teeth, your ring, the Viceroys 
Live now in a clear plastic bag like evidence collected 
From your detective days at a Hillsborough County crime scene. 
What is missing is flesh, hair, eyes, anger, wit. 
Leaving us with deep gray ashes and small pieces of bone 
From your innermost ear or longest toe. Your vanity 
Is shamed as your dwarfish bride proves cheaper even than you, 
Storing you larger than life in a textured black plastic box. 
I suppose the pieces are smooth. Your oldest four are ahead of me; 
The only son first, others in succession, the pregnant one weeping, 
Snapping her camera, as if this day we will soon forget. 
The tactless one announcing, I didn't know there would be bone, leaving 
Nothing in the box for me. 
16 


Viceroy

Dant, Traci

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 06 Article 13 
2006 
The Bath 
Traci Dant 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Dant, Traci (2006) "The Bath," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 06, Article 13. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol06/iss2006/13 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
Traci Dant 
THE BATH 
1. 
My grandfather 
died after, 
the visiting nurse 
2. 
soaped his privates, 
patted him dry, 
and buttoned him away. 
3. 
He had 
cancer. 
But we 
4. 
know 
it was the bath 
that killed him. 
18 


The Bath

Harrod, Lois Marie

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 06 Article 16 
2006 
"You Mean We're Just Waiting to Die?" 
Lois Marie Harrod 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Harrod, Lois Marie (2006) ""You Mean We're Just Waiting to Die?"," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): 
Vol. 06, Article 16. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol06/iss2006/16 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
Lois Marie Harrod 
"You MEAN WE'RE JUST WAITING TO DIE?" 
-student comment on Andrew Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress" 
So what did you learn as you waited for your father? 
I was learning Chinese 
from translations in fortune cookies 
Wo xiang-yao yi-bei cha, I'd like a cup of tea. 
Can you become too old to learn? 
As my father shriveled, he drank Twinings 
and underlined random words-mascara, casserole, 
size 6, diet-as if he were still teaching philosophy. 
Are the old too good to weep? 
At the nursing home, one nurse's aide said 
your father looks good today, but 
how good you look depends on where you are. 
How do you want to look tomorrow? 
Grave as dust-something fine and scattered. 
Wait, said the man, who complained his lungs were giving 
out-worms are sexing the bronchial tubes. 
Do you know how much asbestos was in those buildings? 
Enough to give everyone in New York City 
a good shot of espresso. Wo xiang-yao yi-bei cha, 
wings, chariot, proper, size, slick. 
22 
What do you want in life? 
The Amish girl wanted two things 
she could never have: a red car 
and a red dress with ruffles and wild roses. 
Does the rain fall on lucky and unlucky numbers alike? 
3, 8 12, 
27, 37, 42 
No, I do not think so. 
Is it easy to confuse egg rolls with butterflies? 
Yes, in a whirlwind, but listen. 
Elizabeth says she can't allow her big-eared son 
to ascend the throne. 
Can't you teach an old queen new tricks? 
It's difficult but when Queenie got cataracts, 
I taught her to step down when I said 
step down. 
Was she continent? 
Yes, but my father wore a diaper 
for four years and then at the end 
the nurse just laid a pad under him. 
Did you see him naked? 
Yes, and I looked away. 
23 


You Mean We\u27re Just Waiting to Die?

Groom, Kelle

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 06 Article 18 
2006 
How Rolling Stone Saved My Life 
Kelle Groom 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Groom, Kelle (2006) "How Rolling Stone Saved My Life," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 06, 
Article 18. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol06/iss2006/18 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
Kelle Groom 
How ROLLING STONE SAVED MY LIFE 
In Labyrinths, Borges said, "the night pleases us because it 
suppresses idle details, just as our memory does." The spiral 
mirroring the Milky Way, the underworld, even our bodies 
inside, our falling for many nights. I'd run at night, in snow, 
start at midnight when things quieted, past factories, empty highway, 
Dunkin' Donuts the only yellow light, prison nearby. A girl 
in my dorm would raise her voice like a mother when I left, 
though I was always safe, & didn't want company because at night 
the buildings became older, defined, they showed me 
their personalities, each factory window empty and full 
with everyone who'd ever looked out year after year, each eyelash 
blink. The snow like Windex on the past, clearing a mirror. 
But I was in Florida in August & couldn't run, everything 
meant to burn, palmetto, pine needles, the sun kindling everyone 
into a drunken candle. I took sweltering walks at night 
past sand pits, the mall's cool air-conditioned hand, wearing Levis, 
tube top, dollars in my pocket for a magazine. A man jogging 
ahead in jeans had seemed strange, chunky in a sweatshirt, too many 
clothes, but the sky was pink, there was a little breeze. On my way 
home from the drugstore, I'd seen the jogger up ahead, he'd turned 
too, running the way we'd come, but then he'd disappeared. 
I remembered the 7-11 carried Rolling Stone, 
picked up the issue with Joni Mitchell on the cover, powdery, 
getting old. Later, I guessed where the jogger had gone, 
26 
understood the way he'd appeared like a figure in a board 
game, then vanished near the 7-11. The back of the store 
secluded and dark, I thought of him there, overdressed, wondering 
why I didn't pass by his knife & the green dumpster, imagining 
the ease of my wings folded, legs a basket, jumbled. Impatient, 
he'd run down the road ahead while I read, waited again, in the dark 
near my house, ski mask, yellow hair like a broom sticking up, cut 
eyes, mouth, & when he spoke, I tasted how easily I could be leaves 
in a hidden place, rain & blood, earth, where a body can go 
maneuvering between woods & bushes, his knife at my belly, 
diagramming an entrance while I kept near the white center line, 
losing ground until a car came, scared him off, headlights bright as snow. 
27 


How Rolling Stone Saved My Life

Secord, Laura

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 06 Article 24 
2006 
The Burning 
Laura Secord 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Secord, Laura (2006) "The Burning," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 06, Article 24. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol06/iss2006/24 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
Laura Secord 
THE BURNING 
As a girl, I held the hot coals 
but the laying into arms 
still burns me 
and both times 
and both times 
that was nothing 
of the cold charred spine 
and brittle empty rib cage 
of my son 
I rub myself in ashes 
I am chilled 
34 


The Burning

Robbins, Liz

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 06 Article 33 
2006 
Voice in a Water Drip 
Liz Robbins 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Robbins, Liz (2006) "Voice in a Water Drip," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 06, Article 33. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol06/iss2006/33 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
Liz Robbins 
VOICE IN A WATER DRIP 
My father, by way of suggesting it's high time 
I had a baby, relates the story of Adam and Eve: 
how through them God shows He wants 
two things from humanity: work and offspring. 
He-my father-believes in a simple equation: 
if you've got the tools, you've got to use them. 
To show him I understand, I suggest 
that this is like saying if one has a small hole 
in one's roof, one must plug it up, that a person 
can't be happy 'til she does. 
He says, Exactly. What I don't say 
is that a person can get used to 
a hole in the roof. That hauling out 
the worn bucket every time it rains 
even begets a surge of power 
like forgiveness .... 
even as it merely softens 
the faint mantra of the world 
and of home that chants 
a sound like fix, fix, fix, 
fix, fix. 
43 


Voice in a Water Drip

Agodon, Kelli Russell

PoemMemoirStory (literary 
magazine) 
Volume 07 Article 26 
2007 
Unnecessary Accent 
Kelli Russell Agodon 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Agodon, Kelli Russell (2007) "Unnecessary Accent," PoemMemoirStory (literary magazine): Vol. 07, Article 
26. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/pms/vol07/iss2007/26 
This content has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of the UAB Digital Commons, and is 
provided as a free open access item. All inquiries regarding this item or the UAB Digital Commons should be 
directed to the UAB Libraries Office of Scholarly Communication. 
Kelli Russell Agodon 
UNNECESSARY ACCENT 
My mother taught me how to say vagina 
as if I were from England, said, 
If you're going to say it, at least say it with style. 
And after years of practicing in my room-
vagina, vagina, vagina-I spoke it 
as a question, raising my eyebrows 
and sounding Canadian, not English, 
until I finally mastered the tone. 
Now twenty years later 
in the doctor's office after giving birth, 
I try to say it without the accent, 
tell my gynecologist I have a question 
about my newly-stitched vagina, 
my English Chunnel of a vagina, but I 
sound as if I'm poised on the Tower 
Bridge, visiting Westminster Abbey 
with my great-grandmother, speaking 
as if every English ancestor has returned 
to sing from my American mouth. 
God save the queen from my vagina, 
my English vagina that seems destined 
to stroll through Hyde Park with 
or without me, past the white halls 
of this hospital to pick tulips for my new 
daughter and let my recovering body 
rest upon the grass near Speaker's Corner 
one bloody Sunday afternoon. 
32 r-M-~ 


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