Shannon Quinn's work has appeared in numerous literary magazines. She has also written for one of Canada's national newspapers and produced radio features for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She hangs out with a lot of cats. Literally.
Vodka and Misters (March 20, 2010. Issue 15. The DirtyDirty.)
St. Sebastian's Boys Choir is rehearsing outside Mercy's window on Salmon Street. Not quite conscious, she prays through lipsticked teeth with lips that twitch up against words that have no form. The tenor heavy section of the choir sings a Castrati worthy interpretation of Silent Night. It wakes her. Mercy listens as holy sounds come out of the boys' filthy mouths as they practice for the outdoor Christmas concert.
Mercy walks to her window, pressing herself up against the pane. The wintery glass is a mirror for her, a mirror minus reflected recriminations. Looking down, she can see the boys' smooth cold cheeks, uncorrupted by adolescence. She pushes the window open and hikes one leg up onto the sill. The reinforced toe of her sheer black stockings serves as a polite end for the crotch to thigh run she sports. Her flesh peaks through the black tatters like ivory piano keys. She wears The Pilot's undershirt. The cold has turned her sand dollar nipples into hard candies. She lingers in the window, in case the choir master is looking. 
After every music class Little Mercy used to be invited into the choir master's office. He kept a bowl of bright pink sugar sticks on his desk. She would watch as he put his hand into the bowl, fingertips tapping at each candy -- clicking them together before selecting a few to bring to his mouth to crack and grind with his teeth. He said that where he came from they were called "chicken bones".
Every week he sent her home with a fresh package of pink candies with a red satin ribbon around them. Little Mercy never showed them to her mother. She hid them under her bed, and each night fell asleep on top of her precious boxes of bones.
Nobody calls her Little Mercy anymore, not unless she asks them to.
She knows The Pilot will come back through her door in a moment, back from his trip to the shop. She can hear the whining of the lift. He's in the hallway, humming a song she doesn't recognize...something old. As he opens the door, he adds words and sings a little louder. Mercy doesn't turn to look at him.
She can remember that he had stripes on his shoulders and a voice that soothed when it spoke of altitudes. And now on this grey December morning he is in her apartment mixing premium vodka with Tang crystals, not believing his luck.
He hands her a sugary vodka. It cuts through the graveyard dirt of her mouth better than mouthwash. Mercy's age is making The Pilot break into a slow sweat -- pleasure singed by a small amount of guilt. He tosses Mercy a cloth from his suitcase. He wants her to wipe away the mascara that traveled along her cheeks during the night. He tugs at her hair, in an attempt to make it stand down. Her eyes search the street below in case she sees the choir master conducting the boys again, or maybe his pregnant wife watching from the side.
After The Pilot pours a second drink for her he unbuttons his trousers and tries to guide her down to the floor. She goes down heavily and bursts into a fit of giggles as she politely asks him to stop. "Please Mister, please!" But the giggles have a hold on her. He tries to laugh in time with her as he holds her hair and pulls her head towards him. He grabs and twists her hair so quickly that Mercy’s head bumps his leg. The only way she has to steady herself is to clamp her teeth into his thigh. They both stop for a moment...waiting to feel a trickle of blood but she hasn’t broken the skin. The Pilot readjusts his grip and a delicate gold chain from around Mercy’s neck falls away. She sees it on the floor, a few feet from her face. There is a picture of St. Therese on the locket. Mercy realizes that both she and St. Therese go down on their knees in the company of men but for very different reasons. This makes her giggles much worse. She’s barely able to choke out, “Sorry Mister.” The Pilot isn’t laughing anymore. He is standing over her trying to shake the giggles out of her, but this only makes them harder to control so he tries to squeeze them out instead. He does not want to be called Mister. He is only sixteen years older than her and that does not make him a Mister.
He cradles Mercy’s whole self, much too tightly. There is no air, the clocks have stopped ticking. Sweat...not the sweet scent of anticipation from just moments earlier, but the cold stink of fear is leaking out of him. The choir boys are singing scales over and over again. Mercy slumps at an awkward angle. Still.
The Pilot stumbles backwards, falling onto her bed. The boys are silent. He is still until his disbelief, his shaking hands and racing mind are focused and made efficient as terror is added to his shock. Then he begins to pack as if final boarding has already been called. He randomly grabs at Mercy’s belongings, anything he might have touched--the towel he used, the glass he drank from, her sheets, the ashtray, they all go into his carry on. He dresses awkwardly. Speed is making his fingers clumsy. He pulls a rumpled dress shirt out of his case, his shoes take several tries to tie. When he leaves he is careful not to slam the door behind him.
There is no phone in Mercy’s apartment. He will take comfort in that in the future. He will believe that he has successfully packed the memory of this morning into an unused corner of his mind. One day he will pass a girl with blue-grey eyes on the street. One day he will smell Tang when he least expects it. His dark memory will be backlit in his mind--shadowy figures re-enacting the morning. He will tell himself that if there was a phone he would have used it to call for help.
Mercy's body, full of vodka and Tang, has been still on the floor of her apartment on Salmon Street for as long as it possibly can. She has to pee. She opens one eye and giggles. Every little bit of her is fully awake and it is a clean kind of cold Sunday morning. St. Sebastian's Boys Choir, under the careful tutelage of the choir master, sings The Little Drummer Boy. She pulls herself over to the window and as she looks out, the choir master looks up. His eyes flit over her. Little Mercy raises her hand and waves.
Two Poems (March 20, 2010. Issue 15. The DirtyDirty.)
A Girl Learns
I
divise
impromptu
prophylaxis
against
the unanticipated progeny
of
shame.
I
recycle
pillars
of guilt
to
hold up the sky
against
the environmental damage of my word poor
embarrassment.
Raunch
culture tickles the crotch
of
my panties.
A
grafted tension makes me almost borderline lovely.
Leaving
me wet, wanting and too vulnerable
to
the New Feminists.
The
ones who sniff around the word;
long
enough to take a piss,
inauthentic
as college lesbians,
lazy
as lower back tattoos.
I am permanently
elsewhere,
broadcasting
from a remote location.
Whispering
bedroom monologues,
curiously
ignorant
to
the social invention of intimacy
in
this suburban theater of misinformation.
A Boy
This sense of place was failing.
I was infectious, with my lithium laced blood
mapping salty veins through my body.
Your words took hostages.
But it was the claustrophobia
in the small construction of your mind
that made me need to spread my legs
just to breathe.
Able
to sit comfortably
Only after you as prophet pulled the old
declaim and depart
stunt.
Two Poems (October 20, 2009. Issue 10.)
Rapture (Bukowski Contest Honorable Mention)
My street preacher’s casual words
cut flesh from bone.
But his hands are gentle
with my bar scotch beauty.
My educated derelict
has surmised that the graveyard
is about to eat
the neighbourhood
and would like to wash away the after taste with beer and rye
I am weary as only the
resurrected can be-
blood forced to my head
from my sausage casing tube top,
feet raw from the ratty sneakers
I was buried in.
A can of butts occupies the table
between us.
Creation will reinvent itself and crawl
out of this
post-apocalyptic primordial ooze
of ash soup.
Down the street
metal teeth are chewing on the sidewalk.
My tenured alcoholic pays for my drinks.
His eyes roam the curve of the back of my skull.
Drunk from looking at girls under 18.
The metal teeth are moving closer.
I wonder if I should warn him,
but a drink doesn’t buy redemption.
The Trouble with Angels
The thunder in their wings is having an ecological effect and their breath stinks from breathing humanity’s ceiling.
I hear it was at a meeting in Norway that they adopted their scorched earth policy-super pissed that they got turned back at our border.
Bare backing, back burning outlaws told their status was indeterminate while faceless hordes still pressed prayers before them.
Funny thing is, it’s not their exotic exoskeletal dimensions that deny them a point of entry.
It’s their greasy hair and propensity for tattoos.
God’s Warriors look like an 80’s metal band.