3/19/2023 Friday, Saturday By Koss Michael Cory CC
Friday, Saturday There are two stories or maybe more. They’re wired to a switch I can’t finger. A man smashes his girlfriend’s head against the apartment wall next door. I imagine her brains splattered on the plaster. You are dead. It’s Saturday. You killed yourself the day before, and I am phoneless, haunting your apartment. The thumping gets louder, your brother tells me to ignore it via Facetime. I ignore him and knock on the door and tell the animal to get the fuck off her. You are dead or not dead. I want to say Jan killed herself. Stop it. Fuck off. You’re crazy. You have not yet killed yourself but are missing. I knock on the door and say stop it. Please call the police. Jan is missing. I need help. I knock on the door and say I’m calling the police, but my phone has no service. Verizon fuck up. I fake it. It is Friday. You are missing but not dead. You are drinking in a bar, upset. This is what your family told me. You are drinking in a bar and then come home, and I assure you I’ll hire a lawyer, that you won't lose custody. Things will be okay. It’s Saturday, and your body was found Friday. Police wouldn’t let me see you. Neither would your family. There is thumping on the wall. The neighbor runs in the apartment. He beats her up. Then her boyfriend. It’s Friday or Saturday and you are dead or almost dead and people are fighting and your neighbor is about to be dead. I tell him to get the fuck off her. It’s Saturday and we’re headed to New York. I found you a lawyer. "You’ll get the kids back, darling," I promise. Koss is an artist, web designer and writer with over 200 art, visual poetry, poems, fiction, and experimental works in journals including Gone Lawn, Michigan Quarterly (Mixtape), Bending Genres, Cincinnati Review, Spillway, Anti-Heroin Chic, Variant Lit, Moist, Harpy Hybrid, diode poetry, Five Points, Spoon River Review, San Pedro River Review, and many others. They were included in Best Small Fictions 2020 and won the Wergle Flomp Humor poetry award in 2021. They also received Pushcart and BoTN nominations for fiction, CNF, poetry, and fiction from Bending Genres, Variant Lit, Gone Lawn, and Outlook Springs. Koss also had finalist chapbook awards from diode and Harbor Editions. Find links to their work at https://koss-works.com.
Karen Keefe
4/1/2023 12:19:39 pm
This story has put me on the floor in tears. The narrative movement in a time and space where the story has an urgency beyond measuring or enduring. And then the end when the narrator is not allowed to even see the body of someone they tried so hard to help, to save. All the while the narrator is fully aware and responding to the dread and danger impacting other lives. Thank you, Koss. Comments are closed.
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