Winner, 2014 “Best Book Award” from Tacenda Literary Magazine and BleakHouse Publishing, given annually for “a work that sheds a humane light on the nether world of penal institutions, as well as other repressive settings, practices and beliefs.”
Click below for reviews of The Most Natural Thing by:
Jenny Molberg at The American Literary Review
Available on Amazon here
The Most Natural Thing
Anicka cracked a walnut into halves and filled the halves with wax. A birthday candle in each one, she set the halves afloat, in milk. Gently she lifted the spine of the carp: it rose from the flesh in one sweeping motion. The carp lay on the table like an unbuttoned sleeve, the spine did not seem to belong there anymore. We ate the carp, the candles fizzling down. On the table was a watch, a white handkerchief. On the floor lay a doll, the eyes half opened, like hers, like mine, its painted eyebrows raised.
"May I See What You Are"
I was waiting for what stirred inside the reeds to stir again, when I asked: "May I see what you are," and quieted myself, felt my heart clank like a cup inside, up and down the cell bars of the ribs. But nothing moved. I thought about the day reprieves won't come despite my having other plans; how I would beg but lose myself; lose you, Anicka, an apocalypse. A wave smashed up against the shore. Then in the reeds the stork began to flush and--now see what I am?--open its colossal wings.
The Assumption
From its pellet-like source the universe widens. Our car broke down near the fairgrounds that winter. There I saw the World's Tallest Man, harrowed by his ankylosis, his knees like liquidy magic eight balls. He sat in a chair, waving to us. Then he stood as if climbing up a rope. Five o'clock, just about dark. The tow truck arrived. It cranked down its hook on a chain. It hoisted the bumper, lip of a fish, until the car was almost vertical. All together we climbed in the truck, the father, the son, the quiet driver.
Enormous Yellow Sky
Like everyone I hunted mushrooms before I was born, under the two dimensional plane of sky. These were the woods where one meets the deer, the goddess in disguise. Her symbol: What is hidden would like to be known. She led me to a banquet in the clearing. Several guests sat talking at a long table. "Soon no one alive will remember the eighteenth century," whispers my father into my mother's ear. "One day too this will be a fairy tale," says my mother from behind her carnival mask.
Removal
To feel each branching-outward part. I do not feel each part, though I have prayed to hear the small breath of my cells at Wet Mountain. The aspen grove sends messages in leaf-code to its heart, a clutch of roots. Mildew zones out in provinces. Burn up, burn up, the yellow aspen says, burn up—which is another way of saying remember who you are, as you move in your beautiful, arched-upward body, believing yourself your own kingdom, believing yourself to be only yourself, instead of the land.