Brittany Fonte holds an MFA in Creative Writing (fiction).   Her work, both fiction and prose poetry, can be found in journals such as Literary Mama , Breadcrumb Scabs , The Wrong Tree Review , and many more.   She published a chapbook of prose poetry with Silkworms Ink (UK) recently, and has been working as an assistant editor for Lowbrow Press, a poetry press, when not teaching university Composition or Fiction and Non-Fiction.

Three Poems (October 25, 2011. Issue 32.)

Zen Feminism

She scrawled, "Progress, not Perfection" on the sharp edges of her clever stiletto heels.

Fifty Percent

I say, "I think I want a divorce," as if I've thought of anything but in the time it took to call a sitter, kiss goodbyes, get in my car and drive to this office, felled like a tree out of hearing range just waiting for the woodsmen to strike with chainsaws much superior to my broken bark heart. I speak as if there's any choice in the matter of One vs. The Other, or Doormat vs. Boot Heel With Strong Left Hooker. It's hell inside a beaten mind, and I can't hold in the fated flicker any longer. I hold my breath when I lie, and I am running out of air. There's no cover up that can defy the portrait of a prisoner who falls down steep stairs once a month.

The lawyer smiles a smile that is not nearly as compassionate as I'd like, but it's cogitating, collected, and clearly practiced in the photograph she's pasted in the community column; she could win. I know: it is more than banal bickering and more than bitchy barking. It is more than nodding without listening or yelling without forethought at children who've not yet found their "off" buttons or volume switches. It's more than throwing frying pans with spatting oil, too. If I perjure, please—give me solitary; I cannot keep the tears from falling, frank, when my left arm is twisted: to stay, to serve, to conceive, to break when the right answer is forged. I do not believe this is the way; I have seen reruns of "I Love Lucy" and heard love songs by Lennon.

There's tension. I break. It's not her; "It's me." That's what I thought when I burned dinner that first night, broke the television, televised an argument at breakfast with my sister who would say too much, wore jeans too tight for my age and too low for my hips and won a black medallion "…walking into a door." It's what I whispered when I couldn't come, and offered when that man stared at me just a little too long. I admit it was me: I decided to stay because I was pregnant and jobless, believed I could change the person I loved like Lazarus. But I was dead, too.

I say, "We have children," because we do. Two. But when I say such aloud my sanity gurgles and my past intentions make their way from my fettered stomach through a tense trachea. I feel acidic failure spout up in my mouth; there is vomit for five years of faking it with teachers and neighbors and Child Protective Services' calls in response to my neighbors. There is bile for (voluntary) exile from my family. I know fear. I offer my time here on earth to some god, now, and then I shake like the surface of a lake leveled by a tiny skipping-stone, alone: skip, skip, skip, sink.
(((Rings.)))

The lawyer, who probably would rather be called an attorney, hands me a piece of paper with her professional fees and pertinent information. It's black and white and I like gray. It's heavier than anything I've ever held, louder than what I'd say, and newly copied: the ink is wet. Hours and handfuls of zeros seem to cohabitate in columns that begin with "If…" and end with my keeping my children, my life, my name. Money can't matter, now. I know the bitterness of an argument on my tongue, the taste loss and lost fillings, both. I nod. I don't have it, but I will. Will. I approve her numbers because there's no choice today, and there's no option tomorrow.

When the attorney discovers my spouse is a "she," she pats me, maternally, tries not to be patronizing, explains: there is no law for that, here; there is no precedent. I could call the police and file a protection order, but then my children would be without health insurance, tuition, college funds, food; I've thought of this. My kids would be without access to their second mother, without housing or hope as the seeds of second class citizens. My lungs ache to capacity with the scream that has been building bimonthly with my brutal brandings and their fairytale world at odds for more than the time DOMA has been in place, for more than the length of Gaga's career. My hands sweat with knowing: I tried a treaty at home. The fact is that my facts don't matter to a Family Coalition who protects anyone but children who have two mothers, one mother/ no man, idealized couples with unfaithful, rich CEOs. But I say, "Thank you." I feel the chainsaw. And I am shown the door, again.

10 Figs

Agriculture is hard, especially when you have brown thumbs, or no opposable thumbs at all, and hoes and hens are hard to find in India. But farming figs is a noble occupation, and Siddhartha taught more than: figs grow on low-lying, open trees. Should you wish, or seek, sight….

1) Leave that fly flailing on the windowsill to its own devices. This fly fights, daily, just as you do; this fly has a right to his life reign, however dull, like you. And he will soon leave this life for another, perhaps a "higher," human form. (Your first child?)

2) That last cookie in the cookie jar just might not be meant for you. We should all avoid taking what is not ours, even deciphering what is not intended for us: food, materials, sex.

3) Find the Middle Way when at the incredible Middle Eastern restaurant downtown, or at the upscale cupcake shop. Cous cous will be fine four tablespoons in, filling with five, gluttonous past six; icing adds to an already crowded thigh, and mind. So much depends on one dream dish.

4) Slander is such that all persons involved hurt, post phrase. The one who speaks feels guilt, or lacks confidence; the one who is spoken of feels hate, then lacks confidence. Besides, people speak for themselves in the way they conduct themselves; speech is often unnecessary.

5) Indulging in alcohol is not about alcohol, or buzzes or sickness, but feeling moved to smash that fly, take that cookie, gobble that grain, and speak out of turn, too.

6) We should honor all faiths. We learn best that which is taught to us as children, and all faiths hone one rule: compassion. So it is of no concern who wears which church costume.

7) Everything you do today, hurt or not, drunk or not, plants seeds for later feelings and actions: karma. This is not a deductible, not a sliding scale of payment, but simple cause and sane effect.

8) All life is suffering; we must accept this and breathe despite this.

9) We all crave; we crave: love, attention, food, wine, children, money, power. But craving what we cannot have leads to suffering.

10) When we learn to want what we have, we are freed.