Trish Hopkinson
Breast-giver
—found in Breast-giver by Mahasveta Devi
Beggar-pickpocket-hooker,
breast-giver—she creates in the
blind alleys with chapped feet and
large round breasts. Take your wife,
greedy crow, unthinking bull driven by
lust. You eat rice and stolen samosas by
the oil lamp. Countless beings raised a hue
and cry in deepest night. She creates as mother,
pinched skinny even while your flies were
fat. Her capacious bosom, a seething vat
of milk. Her offspring, a better human
material created by devotion, by
mother’s will. I put flowers on
her belly, her languid-hipped
body, her motherhood.
“Breast-giver” was originally published in Degenerates: Voices for Peace. Weasel Press. November 2014.
Preparation
It’s a strange sensation to feel
one’s blood drained and veins
restocked with preservative.
Stranger still to be washed
by a stranger, rubber gloves
and sponge stroking inanimate skin.
You brought them my favorite
dress, the sky blue one with satin
trim and the flats that match.
Even though you prefer me in red,
even though this is all for you
and them, and not for me.
An odd woman with a stern expression
spreads makeup, like cake frosting,
on my face and neck.
She paints pink into my cheeks,
life into my lips, and shadows
on my eyelids—the colors of lies.
She removes the single hoop earring
from my right ear, glues cubic zirconia
cabochons to each lobe,
glues Lee Press-on nails to each finger,
glues false lashes to my lids,
stuck, stuck like glue.
An awkward man comes in and helps
her pull the dress over my head and my hips,
helps her slip each shoe onto each foot.
He first tries to put the left onto the right.
He rolls me onto my side and she zips the back.
He rolls me back onto my back.
They heave me into the lined box, faux silk,
supposedly resistant to punctures, to moisture,
a pillow for comfort.
The funeral home orders their caskets
from Costco, but they didn’t tell you that.
She straightens my head, aligns it
with my spine. She smooths my hair
with a boar hair brush to add shine.
Neither of them talk.
Neither of them smile.
The awkward man closes the lid
and wheels me into a corridor.
Even though you prefer me in red.
Even though I’m decorated like a cake.
You’ll be pleased.
“Preparation” was originally published in Penn Review, October 2017.
Quentin Tarantino Loves the Grateful Dead
But he refuses to admit it. He lies awake at night
envisioning Mountain Girl plucking daisies and braiding them
together for a crown she places on his head. He wakes up late
in the day and writes a screenplay where beautiful women
don leather jumpsuits and slice men in half. He wants you
to think he loves a bloody steak but what he really wants
is some lovely agedashi tofu, soft and drenched
in dashi broth and a sprinkling of chopped scallions.
EXT. JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE -- HOLLYWOOD
He orders the tofu as an appetizer for his vegetarian friend
and watches wistfully as she slips each delicate piece
between her chopsticks and winces a bit when it’s gone, just in time
to cut into his rareness, the blood seething onto his plate,
warm and red. Quentin loves himself
some mid-century modern furniture—the smooth lines,
the Eames low-to-the-ground-chairs, the shag rugs and chrome,
but can’t risk putting it in his house. So he hires a designer
who stands up a sculpture the shape of a penis,
an oddly placed vase. He falls asleep watching a lava lamp,
the one he bought for a girlfriend on Valentine’s Day
and when she left it in the box, and then left him.
Quentin Tarantino loves a good wine spritzer—
take a good wine and add a bit of carbonated water
to make it bubbly and not so rich. It doesn’t change the flavor
really, just makes it more fun, better than without—
like prosecco, but red and glamorous as his own blood.
Tarantino loves his own blood. The salty goodness
that leaks from a hangnail pulled. The drip from a scraped knee
after a night of drinking and a poorly placed curb.
EXT. RED LIGHT DISTRICT – SUNRISE
The scabs are even better, crusty and old,
hard, like an old man with lonely eyes. Quentin
is lonely, like the old man in his scabs
like the old woman in his pancreas, secreting sweetness
or rather, the lack thereof. He wonders if this witch
writes her screenplays in insulin, if she sucks away the sugar,
if she replaces it with bitterness. He hates the spells she puts on him,
the evil silence she conjures while he sleeps. When she’s quiet
she’s most deadly. Quentin Tarantino hates people who can’t
order coffee. It’s not that difficult. Why would anyone
walk into a Starbucks without something in mind.
He loves a good cup of coffee. Not a multiple ingredient
mixed mess of caffeine. What he wants is a simple drip poured
into his cup, no pour-over bullshit, no hipster pretentious siphon
or aero press, just your standard Mr. Coffee at a diner
where the server pours it hot and asks if you would like pie.
INT. DINER -- MORNING
Mr. Tarantino likes his pie hot and ala mode. Apple is best
but cherry is fine in a pinch. The best vanilla ice cream has bits of bean
and clings to the spoon in an attractive way. He only wants the waitress
to cling to something in an attractive way—bend her hips
across the countertop, her uniform creasing in all the right places.
He daydreams finding himself in a quiet coffee shop
next to worn out blue-collars and prostitutes. He wonders
if they know more than he does, if they weather
life in a way he can never understand. He is right to wonder.
Quentin, sweet Quentin, loves dipping his toe in mud
—grit and earth congealing beneath the nail.
It was just last week he had a pedicure, the Vietnamese girl
who scrubbed the bottoms of his feet, giggled a bit when he flinched,
checked her phone while his heels simmered in wax.
The worst part is the grinding on the balls
of his feet. The way she scrapes with reckless abandon.
What if he should remain calloused? He knows the flakes he sheds
are useless. The callouses are beneath the skin.
Tarantino used to give a shit about art
but now he knows he won’t get paid for any of it.
SMASHCUT
QT hates driving alone but when he does,
he listens to episodes My Dad Wrote a Porno.
It’s sickly rewarding and funny. He laughs by himself
behind a windshield of splattered bugs and bird shit. He once
found a whole bird stuck in the grill of his Escalade.
He stopped at a convenience store just outside of Las Vegas
and kicked the bird loose with the toe of his tennis shoe.
EXT. SUNDANCE PARKING LOT -- WINTER
When the Escalade pulls into Sundance and parks he contemplates
moving. It will get cold eventually if he stays in the car, never bothers
to step out, never walks to the screening room or to the Owl Bar
where someone might ask for an autograph or someone might not.
Mr. Tarantino wears Doc Martins to walk the beach.
He doesn’t like sand in his toes. He fears the grit.
His pedicurist thinks it’s weird. Who wears boots on the beach?
But the soles of his feet are soft, smooth as a baby.
Quentin Tarantino wishes he wasn’t circumcised.
What if his foreskin cells determined the man he was meant to be.
He realizes there are some things he will never know. Like if god is real,
does he still have his foreskin? Was he born without one?
INT. QT’S BEDROOM -- MIDNIGHT
Tarantino is plagued with insomnia. He often doesn’t sleep at all.
He watches the numbers flip on his alarm clock and paces a worn space
in the wool carpet in the hall. He used to take Ambien but it made him binge
eat and wake up drooling chocolate in the Lay Z Boy
with five full-size Snicker bar wrappers at his feet.
He is also plagued with a vicious addiction to nicotine.
He’s tried it all, Nicorette, Wellbutrin, QuitNet.com,
lollipops, the patch, lozenges, spray, inhalers, hypnosis,
acupuncture, and laser therapy. Bottom line is he doesn’t want to quit.
Although he has quit lots of things. He quit multiple people—
girlfriends, toxic family members, booze on occasion, bad boy bullshit,
crowds, caring about reviews, caring about awards, caring about
what other people think—or not. (He still cares what people think.)
Do they think about his missing foreskin? Do they know he loves
The Grateful Dead? Maybe he doesn’t care if they know. Quentin
likes to have his fortune told. There’s not much to tell
in the palm of his hand or a Tarot card flipped over,
like the numbers on his alarm clock. His future seems certain,
death, of course, and just doing what he’s always done. Success
will fade, perhaps. But what kind of fortune is that? He remembers
EXT. HIGH SCHOOL -- SUBURBS
high school often, not that those were his glory
days, but the opposite. He never had the balls
to ask out that cheerleader. He’d sit alone at lunch
with only his pimples and greasy bangs to keep him company.
Even the other nerds and drama kids ignored him. You’d think
there’d be some retribution in the fame he’s garnered. There’s not.
Quentin always wanted to be a stunt man, wanted the thrill
of throwing himself through sugar glass, falling from the 32nd floor,
driving a pickup truck off a cliff, wearing a fire suit and careening
into a crowd. It’s too late for that kind of self-indulgence.
Plus, he was always afraid of being in the background.
Maybe he can be the stunt man after all.
INT. FALSE BACKGROUND HANGS IN LOBE 1; LOBE 2 SPORTS A GREEN SCREEN
The brain is a terrifying thing to let wander. But his imagination
is a scab just waiting to be picked. He flicks the dried, dead crust
and watches as the red rises to the skin, lets the drop coat and pool
before hanging itself in a quiet, slow trickle.
CUT TO BLACK.
”Quentin Tarantino Loves the Grateful Dead” was originally published in Drunk Monkeys, April 2020.
Trish Hopkinson is a poet and literary arts advocate. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com and in Colorado, where she runs the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets, and is a board member of the International Women's Writing Guild. Her poetry has been published in several magazines and journals, including Sugar House Review, Glass Poetry Press, and The Penn Review; and her fourth chapbook Almost Famous was published by Yavanika Press in 2019. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer.
