LETTER FROM THE FRONT 46 PRINT

Letter #46

—from the front, date and time undisclosed—

We dump all the camp’s waste into a steel drum. Gas it, light it. For the past three days, I’ve been tamping the flames.

In clouds of burning excrement, I see everything doubled. Fat-cheeked babies with sumo twins. Pairs of white leather ice skates. Their blades trace paper dolls in the smoke—a chain of tiny, repeating ghosts. Sheets fray on clotheslines. Wild swan wings beat around my head until I bleat like a shaman—spirit-spun, grasping at nothing in this theater of dirty vapors.

Everyone’s skittish—eyes like jellyfish, stinging, desirous. Their questions trail me like tentacles. Did I clean my gun? Was I in an officer’s tent after dark, and what was my purpose? When the bomb went off, did I wait for my captain?

Did I wait long enough?

Originally from Lakeland, Florida, Mandy Malloy is a writer and graphic designer living in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is currently finishing her MFA in poetry at Hunter College while doing a day shift in corporate advertising. Her poems have appeared in City Writers Review and The Whitman Sampler.