She Cackled
By Moriah Henkelman


Bristled broken backs beckon benign bruises. Inhabited blades, fluttering, haltingly suspended, cut down, smothered under mountainous snow. The trees, tempestuous. Braggarts burgeon broken bits. Coal black tips of fingertips, alternately warmed and thawed—responsive biting bitter chill. Hammers carve out lives through these taut sinews. She cackled: cloaked creatures, crane crocuses, cruelly crass crystalline choruses.

Headache evenings, throbbing overworked mind, unsettled by creeping sensations this may be flustered filibuster: borscht bought by blustered bourgeoisie bustles.

Click clack. Click clack, overgrown toenails against rough stone bits of imported flooring. She cackled, look the universe between its eyes: cloaked creatures, crane crocuses, cruelly crass crystalline choruses. Click clack. Click clack. Short shipments should stay. Forests feign felicity; swallow the morning of mere hours. Harken the evening, crushed close. Yet the rush of unknown fashioned fear misplaced. Yet. Yet. Yet. Hulking in the foreground but just beyond the periphery. The curl of toes, pinpricking needles through atrophied calve.

He claimed hope is zeitgeist zygotes. Cloaked creatures, crane crocuses, cruelly crass crystalline choruses.

Hereditary haste hackled Wordsworth. Shackled Coleridge. Tackled porridge. Rotting rolling retinal rays. Steady thrumming showerhead, water cascades like fingers down her spine. Corrugated metal cages. Unadulterated bliss. Wooly glove fibers, caught up in unsuspecting tongue, an answer to the burn of December, air wrested from lungs. One more whiskey swig, advancing arterial avarice anon; blood pounding all the while louder. Sherlock's hemlock harried her: cloaked creatures, crane crocuses, cruelly crass crystalline choruses. Where encroaching fingers grasp at straws of wily hair the muddied shifting surface of leather bewares. She waited. She cackled. He harried. She burnished. He finished. She shivered. He buried. She wavered: cloaked creatures, crane crocuses, cruelly crass crystalline choruses.


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Minnesotan trapped in Eastern Iowa reading literature, experimenting with writing form, dreaming of Scotland, and studying her arse off.