in parentheses

Adele Evershed was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her prose and poetry have been published in over a hundred journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net for poetry. Finishing Line Press will publish Adele’s first poetry chapbook, Turbulence in Small Places, in July. Her Novella-in-Flash, Wannabe, was published by Alien Buddha Press in May. Bottlecap Press will publish her second poetry collection, the Brink of Silence, later this year.

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In the Beginning

When God was a girl
The world was a romantic movement
All pastel people and the soul of a rose
It scared her slightly with its whisper of a painting for tourists
Too pastoral—with only one get away boat in the harbor
She wanted an abstract narrative—with a grittier edge
Maybe some graffitied trees twisted and scarred to match her wrists
Some rust and a drip of dark underpass to mildew the masses
And clanging cords overhead in a foreshadowing of Calvary
So she used her fingers to churn the sky with black and white
Tattooing beetles and spiders and rats on our eyelids—
All the pitch-dark things that come out at night just to rob
She added some wildcard lambs for slaughter—all shadow and magic
Maybe we thought they were a little overworked
And there’s always someone who doesn’t like sheep
But we were grateful for the chink of light

She left the view incomplete
A broken circle to leave us always feeling
There must be something more

Then just as she thought she was finished
She heard a drumming—
Something’s coming—something’s coming
And she felt the telltale cramps of her first period
It stained the moon and embarrassed us all
So we stopped looking up
And she knew then she had only just begun…

Madeleines and Other Things that Crumble

Outside the white sky is water washed / and I am sitting in bed / doing a memoir writing workshop / on Zoom / the instructor talks about Proust / and I wonder what is my madeleine moment / currants soaking overnight in cold tea / for the cozy bara brith / my Gran liked to bake / they always came out as glossy as moles / and as dark as the slag / brinking on the mountain

She says / look around / choose an object / I’ll give you four minutes / for a free write / remember / try to link it to a memory / my eyes catch on my bra / lying like a promise on the bed / one cup holds its form / the other twisted back on its self /
like the stories I tell about my father / always a grain of truth / hidden in the memory foam

Include scent / the woman’s voice prompts / I sniff tentatively / mixed with the soap / is the a tang of under boob sweat / or my father / he only ever took cat lick baths / to save water or so he said / later his nooks and crannies were red and inflamed / like a Welsh preacher shouting about the circles of hell / trying to scared us / when we all knew they were reserved for the English

Now the voice is sharing a poem / notice all the s’s / dissolve / school /double fisted / anyone know what double fisted means / and again I think about my father /
shaking the HP with two hands / so that a spray of brown sauce flew out / like sputum / marking my mother’s magnolia anaglypta / of course they painted over it / but each year it would creep back / like the moon shadow on a miner’s lung

Pick a childhood image / and write playfully / if she’d stopped at write / I might have picked up my pen / and written about waiting in the best room / for my father / to take me to ballet / I peered through the nets / a modern day Miss Haversham / asking God to make him appear / when the car pulled in / I’d ask to make him / not smell of beer / and sometimes God answered / but most times he did not

So I can’t write playfully / instead I doodle complicated chains / to anchor me in the here and now / so it looks like I’m having fun with this assignment / like all the other seventy-five middle-aged / middle-class / middling women on the screen / and the one man / Steve with a v / finish up now the voice says / and I think / I was finished a long time ago / and then there’s an echo / and every voice is double fisted

Can you hear an echo / Can you hear an echo
I’ll mute / I’ll mute
Thank you Anita / Thank you Anita
Sweet buns pulled apart / Sweet buns pulled apart
And I’m smiling / smiling / and I’m laughing / laughing
And for the first time
I put Madeleine’s on my shopping list

Alley Ways and Other Roads to Redemption

There was always a world / behind the world we live in / where waging war / and emperor penguins sitting on their eggs / all winter long / compete for clicks / we trailed chain-smoke / depressing things into our own alleys / until we had to look for a graffitied tree / just to imagine green
Yet not all who walk among us are sorry / they proclaim Hell is Los Angeles / and don’t we all secretly suspect / that Satan could win in California / where bullet shavings fall as snow / and old friends and older enemies / prowl the Midnight / half-loaded and cocked
What if we gave ourselves a metaphysical push / left our alleyway / and let the world behind the world / find us / maybe on the other side of the bright white screen / a lucky guess / that opens a new door to contrition
So we stop making movies about what lies for us after death / and document all the urban horror in this little life / proclaiming the real hell / is working for minimum wage / without health benefits
And maybe when you’re desperate the ridiculous might work

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