Kelly Mary McAllister
Kelly Mary McAllister moves through the world as a fat, queer, and disabled woman. She lives in a shoebox in the Toronto sky. Her work has appeared in Beyond Words Literary Magazine, The Closed Eye Open, Drunk Monkeys and Door is a Jar Magazine. She can be found at www.KellyMaryMcAllister.ca
Breakfast of Champions
Blue for my attention span: that takes to twitchy flight,a sparrow that leaps, lands, lifts, looks.
Green for my anxiety:ants always toiling away beneath my surface,digging tunnels, driving deeper in droves.
White for my sadness:the dangling solitary light in the darkan anglerfish’s lying lighting the path to self destruction.
Teal and Red for my chronic pain:the pain that transforms me into easy prey a wounded gazelle, a burden on the herd. Survival of the fittest they say and I am so not that. Colours are how I start my day to fill in what I lack.
Green for my anxiety:ants always toiling away beneath my surface,digging tunnels, driving deeper in droves.
White for my sadness:the dangling solitary light in the darkan anglerfish’s lying lighting the path to self destruction.
Teal and Red for my chronic pain:the pain that transforms me into easy prey a wounded gazelle, a burden on the herd. Survival of the fittest they say and I am so not that. Colours are how I start my day to fill in what I lack.
Late Spring, Early Eve
The smell of charcoal and smoke of searing meat Drifts in through the window of my sterile concrete condo It smells of cheap white buns Burgers like scored hockey pucks Watery mustard Ketchup from the bottle coated in itself A condiment crime scene The precarious picnic table withrusted red paint chipping off in chunks. Stabbing under my nails as I pick at it. Pressing the shard just deep enough to hurt -Kelly, I’m not going tell you again to stop that- It smells of slides and swings and seesawswith too many kids piled on, tooold for the seesaw, still young enough to get away with it Bikes abandoned on the periphery of a park with no sidewalks Calling cards for neighbourhood friends. One more time around the block before the streetlights come onSkinned knees and grease stained shins Sunkissed cheeks and missing teeth It smells ofMy mother’s exasperated voice Carried by a soft breeze with the promise of summer. My ears perkTuned for the cadence Tuned for the Exact pitch and tone of her voice It vibrates inside me A tuning fork for my soul. calling me home It smells ofhome. Not the place I live at the moment the place I sleep where I keep my things But the place I live in always. Inevitably unchangingly. Why would it? Home would always be this place Mine and ours and completeA place with the promise of Endless ordinary nights Just like this one
