Treehouse

online magazine for short, good writing

Month: January, 2014

January 7, 2014

To De-Scarf

by a contributor

Chloe N. Clark

Girls with ribbons
tied tight round
their throats should never
be trusted—
      one wrong pull,
      fingers caught,
      can only ever end
      with the tie undone,
      the cut revealed,
      the head to come
      tumbling off, eyes wide,
      in beautiful surprise
at the inevitable looseness of knots.

Chloe N. Clark is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing & Environment. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in such places as Prick of the Spindle, Rosebud, Fogged Clarity, and Verse Wisconsin. She is at work on a novel about magicians, enjoys making doughnuts, and is otherwise awesome. Follow her on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes or check out her blog Pints and Cupcakes.

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January 6, 2014

Spoke Through Windows

by a contributor

Chloe N. Clark

The house on the hill doesn’t stand
up anymore. I don’t know
why. Everyone tells stories
and half-truth lullabies about
it. Some people say that a fire
came up from beneath—flames
licked at everything inside,
made it into a palace
of ash the wind embraced
and now we have nothing.
Some people say that its
basement opened into
heaven but no one believes
that and so no one gets to
paradise. Now that the house doesn’t
stand up, we make a game
of it—to run up and touch
where the door might once
have been. I trust what I’ve learned
in books: ghosts don’t
exist, bad things don’t happen.
So I go first. I run, I knock,
just once against
the nowhere door. There is
nothing and so I turn to leave
until someone invites
me in.
I always go inside.

Chloe N. Clark is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing & Environment. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in such places as Prick of the Spindle, Rosebud, Fogged Clarity, and Verse Wisconsin. She is at work on a novel about magicians, enjoys making doughnuts, and is otherwise awesome. Follow her on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes or check out her blog Pints and Cupcakes.

♦

1 Comment