C U R E A L L

K I M P A R K O

C U R E A L L

K I M P A R K O

Box 82588, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15218

www.caketrain.org

caketrainjournal@hotmail.com

© 2009 Kim Parko.

Cover photograph © 2007 Elene Usdin. Used by permission.

Printed on acid-free paper in Kearney, Nebraska, by Morris Publishing.

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Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the publica-

tions in which these pieces first appeared, some in different form

and under different titles:

3rd Bed: “Explain,” “1.5”; 5AM: “Learn”; Lady Churchill’s

Rosebud Wristlet: “Schoolgirl”; Frigg: “Sunday Best,” “The

Curtain,” “The Conversationalists,” “Lucy,” “Calm Eye,” “The

Spinning Woman,” “Gash,” “Matinee,” “Hibernation”; Keyhole:

“Root Mouth”; Jubilat: “Murderess,” “Hold,” “Commerce”;

Ocho: “The Bomb,” “Stork,” “Phases of the Moon”; The Bitter

Oleander: “After the Flood.”

E X P L A I N 1 1

C A S T O F C H A R A C T E R S 1 4

L E A R N 1 9

M Y D O P P E L G A N G E R 2 0

S C H O O L G I R L 2 2

S U N D A Y B E S T 2 3

R O O T M O U T H 2 4

L O O K I N G F O R D A U G H T E R 2 5

S I C K W I T H C R O W S 2 7

Q U E E N B E E 2 9

I N F I R M 3 0

P U S H 3 1

P O C K E T 3 2

R O O M S 3 4

M A T T R E S S 4 0

C U R L S 4 1

P E A S P R O U T S 4 3

P U P P E T S H O W 4 4

R A P I S T 4 5

T H E U N D E R F E D H A M S T E R 4 6

M U R D E R E S S 4 7

T H E C U R T A I N 4 8

A N C E S T R Y 4 9

B I R D S A N C T U A R Y 5 0

T H E R E V O L V E R 5 1

V O L U M E C O N T R O L 5 2

H E D G E S 5 4

S P I N E 5 6

B E A U T Y T R E A T M E N T 5 7

N O T E S F R O M T H E H I R E D H E L P 5 9

A N N O U N C E M E N T C O N C E R N I N G A N S W E R S 7 0

P O S S I B L E C O M P L I C A T I O N S 7 2

T H E C O N V E R S A T I O N A L I S T S 7 3

F I S T S 7 4

A N S W E R S 7 6

T R A I N 8 0

L U C Y 8 1

C A L M E Y E 8 2

H O L D 8 3

L A R G E L E T T E R 8 5

W I N D O W 8 6

R E F L E C T I O N S 8 7

T H E S P I N N I N G W O M A N 8 8

C O M M E R C E 8 9

T H E B O M B 9 1

G A S H 9 2

E R A S 9 4

1 . 5 1 0 7

T H E A N I M A L S 1 1 0

A F T E R T H E F L O O D 1 1 1

S T O R K 1 1 2

M A T I N E E 1 1 3

P H A S E S O F T H E M O O N 1 1 5

H I B E R N A T I O N 1 1 7

U N D E R W I N G 1 1 8

For

Steve

Kholi

Mom

Dad

1 1

E X P L A I N

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Explain the condition.

The heart can float around in the chest for no good reason. You

can just wake up one morning and that is what it is doing. And

try as you may to anchor it, it does not work. A futile attempt

as you notice access is impossible through the physical struc-

ture.

Explain the circumstance.

You live within a society that is responsible for the most hei-

nous crimes. And your living condones. You have two choices.

Both rife with demons. Stains are shadows and vice versa. See the

difference. One changes with the source of light. Speaking of

which, your own imperfections impede your ability to access the

fountain. When you speak in a crowd you cautiously drip over

the sides. You spread languidly across the floor until inertia.

1 2

Explain the mitigating factors.

The body will still itself in the case of overload. No one will say,

“this is good.” No one appreciates an altered state. The altered

are often a burden to society. Although some fellows may ex-

press concern in the form of food and used clothing.

Explain the potential causes.

If your heart is both loose and beating rapidly, it is good to

identify why. Practice by lying in bed. Concentrate on the

looseness and the beating. Think of three vastly different con-

cepts. Some choices: houseplant, cobweb, unmade bed. One

will certainly exacerbate the situation.

Explain the danger.

The danger is presumed ability.

Explain the cure.

If you take a bird’s-eye view it is all very sad and misguided. This

can cause the aforementioned. If you stay within your intimate

realm you are cured. If cured you find no space to move.

1 3

Explain the effectiveness.

Idleness is a workshop of perception.

1 4

C A S T O F C H A R A C T E R S

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ME: a lake is not so much water as birds

HER: an ocean is ebbing fragile dollars

US: this is how we gauge failure

YOU: a mountain is not so much granite as ants

MOTHER: someone who protects the lives of insects

OTHERS: nurse the scribble of our brains

HE: a food chain tethers us to mangrove

SHE: inhuman talent for rootedness

BRUCE: cloud crowns unfurl

MOLLY: we slowly coiled tower’s staircase

MARTHA: a cool unchlorinated pool

DIANA: they arrived in pure condensation

1 5

DARLENE: rain keeps still in cobweb

PATRICK: if you find a leaf twice the size of your body

SUE: swaddle yourself

ROGER: I hold hands up

GOLDIE: I love to see a vein’s scaffold

LUCY: can you imagine the pith of forest

JANDICE: immortalized as a ghoul

SOMEONE: The Curtain houses prophecy

HE: hedges map their thoughts in wood grain

WE: what are you thinking

US: chair

OTHERS: measure the amount of insecticide

THOSE: what is needed to keep the estate pest-free

THAT: we embody reptile migration

HIM: pardon me for saying

THEY: how our vacation has left us clear-cut

1 6

SHE: mountain spines sag

ANYONE: you are arranged in swayback

THIS: a nest is well built in observation

OTHERS: we chart Doppler’s green blobs

EVERYONE: this floor is marred with rearrangement

NOBODY: clouds are inflated to east by lungful

SOMEBODY: the flood took eight hours to leave

IT: tower-man says forest-ghoul searches blood

THAT: who is trying to scare domestics

THEM: I name the frogs “bo peeps”

US: bo peep bo peep bo peep

THOSE: we are disappeared in thickets

MINE: what if the ocean were liver

EVERYBODY: all our souvenirs are bile

YOURS: a simple conduit for purity

ME: my skin leaks pimples

1 7

YOU: for years I have been covered in abscess

THEM: clumps of rain forest hang from scaffold

SHE: from bird’s-eye a superimposed pattern

OTHERS: touchdown over small sprigs

HER: what is leading me to ruin

ME: classify these salient weeds

I F Y O U R M O O N

R E F U S E S T O W A N E

F E E D I T T H E J U I C E O F

O N E H U N D R E D D A R K B E R R I E S

+

I F P H A N T O M S S W I M

B E H I N D Y O U R B R E A S T B O N E

F I S H T H E M O U T W I T H

A B I R C H W O O D T W I G

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I F L I C H E N

C O A T S Y O U R E L B O W S

C O M E T O R E S T I N T H E

C R O O K O F A B R A N C H

1 9

L E A R N

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I was diagnosed with failure to thrive so my mother took me

home and put me under the grow lights. I spent my younger

years among the chlorophyll-skinned. When I finally grew a

sprout from the top of my head, it was time for kindergarten,

but I only knew how to communicate through photosynthesis

and was mocked or ignored by the other children. Daily I

waited to get home and sit under my lamp and idly grow toward

the false sun with my seedlings.

I was diagnosed with fire blight. They put me in a basement

room all day and I came home cracked and wilted. Mother wor-

ried about my health and upped the dosage of fertilizer. When I

entered grade school the principal was made weary by my size

relative to my intelligence. “These are dangerous times,” he said.

2 0

M Y D O P P E L G A N G E R

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In the beginning I had no doppelganger. I had only Martha. I

draped Martha over me. I hid beneath her. I put her edges in my

mouth and sucked them to frays. I lived beneath Martha every

winter and above her every summer. In time, Martha became so

threadbare that I mistook her for lace.

One day my mother was holding Martha above my head so

high that I could not reach.

That night my doppelganger inched toward me and soon it

was beneath my sheets. It was spooning me before I knew how

to be eaten. It was putting its hands on my breasts, which were

coming in like hard stones unearthed in a plowing.

Where had my mother put Martha? I searched through all

my mother’s trunks in the house; most of them held vast stores

of river water for the escape route my mother would one day

pour into the riverbed she had carved down the side of a

mountain. In one trunk, I found her collection of oars. In an-

other, I found instructions for knitting Martha.

Every night, my doppelganger rode me, pinched my hard

2 1

stones, crumbled my pelvis, and injected me with trout.

I knitted a new Martha, furtively, while my mother put her

kayak in a trunk and practiced pulling oars through the rapids

she had been hoarding for so many years.

2 2

S C H O O L G I R L

+

I ate my breakfast like a good schoolgirl. I daydreamed that I

was drinking a glass of milk for my bones, and that my bones

wept for dead calves. I daydreamed that I was tasting bacon

while a soft pig tongue licked the slaughter of its body.

During class, I had many desires: I wished to suck the knobs

of my chest inward, away from probing boy-eyes; I wished to

question authority with pastel-glossed lips; I wished to console

Diana, who blamed herself for misery amongst animals.

It was time for lunch. The bell rang and the schoolchildren

lined up at the trough. “Today you will consume the rendering

of animals,” the woman in the hairnet mouthed joylessly. Her

own breasts had been cut off, but she spooned out the mash

just the same.

2 3

S U N D A Y B E S T

+

I donned my Sunday best and walked out the door into the day

of my birth. My mother said I was “full of woe” and lo and be-

hold, within my chest sloshed a bucket of sorrow.

I walked to the park and sat under the Shedding Tree. No

matter the season, the Shedding Tree rained down debris coated

in pollen. Every once in a while, it drizzled sap. I sat under the

tree for hours. My bucket of sorrow stilled, and when I looked

into it, I could see my reflection enshrouded in seeds and nuts

and berries and the pollen covered my adornment like a fine,

yellow fur.

When I got home, my mother took a good look at me and

sighed. She knew there was no saving my Sunday best.

2 4

R O O T M O U T H

+

My mother told me not to gnash my teeth in public. She was

afraid that over time, I would grind my teeth down to their

roots. She said, “Who’d marry a woman with a mouth full of

roots?” But I couldn’t stop gnashing, and come my tenth birth-

day, my smile was thick with dark, branching roots.

I perfected my closed-lipped smile and my closed-lipped

talk. The boys found my closed lips intriguing. What was be-

hind them? They had to know. “C’mon,” they beseeched, “let

us see.” They tried prying my lips apart with their fingers, then

a butter knife, then a crowbar. They would not be opened.

Meanwhile, there was a tree with baby-green leaves burgeoning

in my brain.

2 5

L O O K I N G F O R D A U G H T E R

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My mother was looking for her daughter in all the wrong

places. First, she looked for her in the wisteria. Then she looked

for her in the sagebrush. But those places were not where her

daughter was.

Her daughter was on foot, soon to be swallowed by the

gaping woods. Her daughter was just beginning to feel the

soreness of her body. She moved carefully to protect the soft

parts that swelled from her tight core.

My mother was sad because she did not know where to

look for her daughter. She felt, acutely, that she did not know

where her daughter might go.

Her daughter wore a white cape in the forest, and she

crushed the juice from berries to color it. Her daughter noticed

the patterns of lichen on the rocks. With each forceful step

through the underbrush, she thought, it’s as if I knew where I

was going.

My mother had an idea. She swept under every piece of

furniture in the house. She took out all the forks and straightened

2 6

their prongs. She stacked a pile of newspapers in the yard and

watched the nightly rain flush their type to slur.

Her daughter woke in a pine needle bed one morning. She

saw the butterfly mobile that hung over her crib. She reached

toward a glass-eyed bear that had always rested beside her.

My mother crawled to the bathroom in a siege of cramps.

Beneath her ribs was a breach. She felt a thick, meandering line

pull itself from her body.

2 7

S I C K W I T H C R O W S

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“Keep the crows out!” My mother called after me in her usual

merry voice tinged with devastation. I had that rare genetic dis-

ease that lets the crows in if you aren’t vigilant. The crows

followed me like streams of obsidian. The magnetism that the

crows felt toward me was strictly spiritual. I was their chosen

repository. Armed with a can of pepper spray, I struggled to

thwart their pilgrimage.

You cannot live with crows inside you. The most I ever had

were three, and the infestation downed me for months.

“You can’t kill the host,” I tried to explain as they sur-

rounded me in charcoal plumes.

The situation made me ponder sacrifice: should I give up

my self, pitifully singular, for the salvation of the multitude?

When I was sick with crows, it was not all that bad. It was

like my organs were all asleep and caught in dreams of flying.

At night I woke with crow call, an achy sound that made

me feel as if I had been compromised in some slightly violent

way. It swirled around my esophagus so that I sickened,

2 8

vomited tufts of glistening feathers. I lay back down. My

thoughts hardened into a great, uncompromised beak. My or-

gans launched themselves into air. My fingers contracted and

sprouted scales. I marveled at their prehensile strength. They

grasped what was left of my body, lifting me up and out

through the open window.

2 9

Q U E E N B E E

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I was caged for hysteria and high-pitched laments. I took my

last bee with me to my cell. My other bees, in the span of a

night, had disappeared. My last bee’s name was Bee and she was

the queen. It should have been Bee that moaned and wailed and

tore her hair out, but she was subdued by a blue pill that the

entomologist had prescribed for grief. She kept mumbling,

“When will my colony arrive?” My jailors were wary of me

because the niceties of human interaction were lost to me in

this time of tragedy. I cursed them: “Bring nectar, you fuckers.”

But they rebuffed my request with a plate of anguished meat

and a bowl of pesticide minus the fruit. After days, Bee

succumbed to toxins and despair; the blue pill could not

penetrate her tiny, weeping heart. I held her striped body in my

palm. Even in death she displayed a regal bearing.

3 0

I N F I R M

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“You are infirm,” I was told inside the infirmary. Nothing could

be truer, I thought as I jiggled my doughy arms and belly.

After many bedridden days the nurse told me, “You have a

suitor.” I desperately tried to knead myself beautiful, but in the

heat of the afternoon my arms drooped and my belly sagged.

My suitor sat by my bedside.

“You look pasty,” he informed me.

“Would you do me the service of placing me in the

broiler?”

My suitor did so with the chivalrous aplomb of a new lover.

“Remember to check on me every few seconds.”

“Certainly,” he said, his eyes gleaming. But he left me in a

minute too long, and later had to scrape me clean of char.

3 1

P U S H

+

I could not stand erect because of some unknown weight. A

group of nurses tended to me. The nurses sat on the sides of my

bed and lifted my shirt. They saw that my breasts were covered

with a fine, green fur.

My room was filled with vapor and steam, and the nurses

could make out small particles in the air that swished their tails.

One nurse went to prepare tea and found all the dishes in the

cabinets filled with dark, curling hairs. The nurse made tea any-

way, and I sipped from a hirsute mug. The tea was musky and

sweet with an undertone of brine.

Another nurse bathed me, gently removing the green moss

that covered my bosom. Yet another nurse parted my legs and

saw a little girl inside me, breathing all on her own. The nurse

said, “Push, push!” but I refused. I then took a small doll that

lay beside me on the bed. I reached through the opening in my

pelvic floor and handed it to the little girl.

Kim Parko lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband and

dog. She teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is

the author of the chapbook The Rest of the World Seems Unlikely

(Achilles Chapbook Series, 2009). This is her first book.