Zoe Canner

perpetual cling

here's to being told you're lying when
you're not. i've never been interested

in a casual life, my mom a whistling
beetle, my dad a bunny, my mom a

worker bee, my dad the honey. i can't
find my legs &my face filled with

beets in too-white rooms. i am my
mother's little soldier. the pied piper

was never a man. i contort my body,
ear to the tarmac other one aiming for

my heart. my hands fluttering about
to protect my eyes. reprimanding

myself for all that i don't do every
day. always too cowardly. always i

should've been faster, less hesitant,
more altruistic. i am distracted with

the living as is custom. i am burnt
golden raisin challah toast. enter into

my nose &clothes. burnt. homogeny
sounds too much like hegemony.

certainty is never just around the
corner. sometimes this woman is

nothing like a woman &still a woman.
i am so bad at quitting. i never say it.

i say hiatus or another opportunity
that i couldn't pass up. but usually i

just don't show up. don't call back.
don't email. don't email back.

whenever i curse someone who runs
a stop sign &they see me, i

immediately worry that i will be the
last straw that causes them to kill

themselves. my dad's been dead
longer than any of my romantic

relationships or tank tops or careers.
my eyesight is so bad the screensaver

on the computer at the library twenty
feet away from me looks like

advertisements for pornography
&then i see it is just romance novels.

just. my thumb is not a finger. my
thumb feels so different from my

other feelings. so loud. time creeps
&marches &slips &dances &ticks

&drips &lies. time lies. &as my dad
always said, wait wait wait wait i

can't hear you without my glasses.


Zoe Canner's writing has appeared in The Laurel Review, Maudlin House, Occulum, Pouch, Matter, High Shelf Press, SUSAN / The Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles where she indulges in hilly walks at dusk when the night-blooming jasmine is at its peak fragrance. zoecanner.com