STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
ELIZABETH VIGNALI
(from Catalog of Things She Only Did Once)
when she was six. The greasy give
of the lemon-wax stick under her teeth
oiled the tracks for other illicit eating
obsessions: blueberry muffin mix
straight from the pouch, powdery grit
turned goo inside her cheeks; a bag
of sundried tomatoes, their distinctive
sticky tang turned sour in her stomach
so she could never touch them again.
She didn’t know why, but she loved
uncooked things-- dusty pouches of
fluorescent macaroni cheese,
the unrelenting crunch of ramen noodles.
She never stopped eating oddities.
Crayons, clay, the cornstarch pellets
from shipments her folks had ordered.
She was hungry for something
she couldn't name. Nothing appeased
the ache—not eggshells, not orange peels.
Not paper or fingernails or mud.
(from Catalog of Things She Only Did Once)
when she was seven.
Scooter wheel/strip of grass/splintered wrist.
She offered her arm up to her mother.
Tears fleeing her face.
At the hospital
the doctor talked about her body over her body.
Something about setting the bone,
something about the best way to proceed.
A decision to be made. The room smelled like
bandages/rubber sneakers/the gel
the playground lady squirted on all the kids’
hands when they stood in line to come back inside.
The hospital room was so bright it stung.
We need to decide, the doctor said
and looked at his watch/her mother/the nurse/
his watch/her mother/the nurse.
Explain it to her, her mother said,
and she felt grateful for a mother
who understood that people are in charge
of their own bodies, even when they’re seven.
She hated her mother for this later.
Wished she would have taken control
of a situation just once. But that was later.
Right now she was holding her mom’s hand
and pretending to be okay
because she was the one who said
she didn’t need the shot, she was the one
clenching her teeth against the pain.
(from Catalog of Things She Only Did Once)
and fell in love with fear a little,
the flop of heart in her throat. The thin peel
of world she was in, a whole huge faketastic
Disneyland outside, bright and loud and untouchable.
When the doors slid open at the top of the tower
and everyone on the ride gasped at the shock
of apex, of breeze and sun and silence,
she squeezed her dad’s hand and didn’t look.
She stared at the floor where the seat in front
was bolted fast and tried to identify all the smells:
popcorn, sweat, the apple shampoo she’d washed
her hair with, her dad’s Old Spice deodorant,
a chemical-grease smell from the gears.
When the ride dropped and her dad hung in the air
a fraction of a second longer than she did,
she didn’t question it. It felt like a confirmation,
this leaving behind. After that, every time she
smelled popcorn or WD-40, she felt
like she was falling.
(from Catalog of Things She Only Did Once)
because it’s an important coming-of-age film,
her mom said, which made her want to hate it.
But she didn’t hate it, she just hated seeing it
with her mom, who called everything a parable
and watched her face while the retinue of teens
showed her how not to live, abashed at all
the wrong things: poverty and mental illness
and abuse-- nothing to be ashamed of, these days.
She liked to think she could be friends with any
of them, except John, whose uninvited face
between Claire’s legs caused a vicious
and confusing desire. That was the crux of it--
she felt it as if it had happened to her:
his breath on her thigh, the musky scent
she couldn’t help, her adamant knee banging
on his cheek when she slammed her legs closed.
She couldn’t shake it after that. Unwelcome lust,
this begrudging gift, a botched thorn in her heart.
Elizabeth Vignali is the author of the poetry collection House of the Silverfish (Unsolicited Press 2021) and three chapbooks, the most recent of which is Endangered [Animal] (Floating Bridge Press 2019). Her work has appeared in Willow Springs, Poetry Northwest, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, The Literary Review, and others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she works as an optician, produces the Bellingham Kitchen Session reading series, and serves as poetry editor of Sweet Tree Review.
