Two Texts

J.D. Mitchell-Lumsden

Three families in a tenement


The first family built a crude wooden cage in the corner off the kitchen for the children and belligerent elder men and was always shoving unknowns into the hallway and fighting for chairs and pulling ears and kicking babies. There was ever rioting in the doorframe.

The second family built an altar for themselves and themselves included the unknowns. There were hundreds. The children’s mouths were stained around which they never worried over because they had an altar and if the altar were not enough than by god the children were meant to starve.

The third family were owls. When food was scarce they ate the rotten babies. They left the old men for their dirty jokes. The first family thought this economical and were quick to put their children in the factories and shops. The second family well they prayed for the babies. The owls just knew. They knew they were hungry. And that there was already something seriously unnatural about these generations.







The border and refugee

There was a man was a border a drowning woman phoned from her flooded house asking refuge
    in the north, in your brain, she said.
My feet are in the north, the man insisted and disconnected the telephone.
The next day the woman phoned again, I will take refuge in your shoes if I may.
I am my border, said the man, wait in line.
To let the flood have me instead of into yourself? asked the woman.
I do not see the problem your fetus had gills and matter cannot be destroyed nor created, said the
    man and hung up the telephone.
The next day the woman phoned, I don’t believe in ignorance.
The man hung up the rainfall until dawn.
The water rose above the woman’s chin swimming into the basement where she crawled into the
    deep freezer in hopes the future would find her.

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