Julia Nunes
Julia Nunes @ Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis; show review at Weheartmusic.
table wisdom.
He’s charming the audience. He smiles like Clark Kent. Please, dear, just solve the fucking puzzle. My mother, breasts heaving, fans herself with newsprint. John Whoever leans in, glasses dangerously close to freedom, says “break the bread, dear, we’re famished.” My purse, a small baguette in gold, quivers.
After school, the missing children call. They want to come home. An automated voice asks them to leave a message. Your call is very important to us. My mother pushes herself erect. Thighs dappled with floral moles. One is Chrysanthemum. One smells like rose. He reads from a manuscript: “Your licentious musk, your wooly bush…” These are the forgeries of jealousy.
The result of tired, restless brain.
NOTE: This will probably be revised later, with fresh morning eyes.
trinkets.
Children’s pools and standing ankle deep in water, we watched the shame run down his legs. Even as his tide rose we wouldn’t move, fearless of wrath and waves or the slap of big hands and dinner served after dark, since we liked cold peas and rolled them between our fingers. No, we waited for him to make a sound and he did after some time. But not the soft whine that reminded us of deflated balloons; he rubbed his knee, rubbed the spot now stained a golden piss, until his hand was covered, a new glove. When he tasted his own fingers and hummed a little, we dropped our gaze, as we’d been taught was the appropriate response to strange behavior. One by one, however, we looked. Someone said gross with a heavy affectation, another tittered in a fat, rude way. It was pretense. We were fascinated. Years later we’d crowd around a fuzzy image of sex and feel the same curious disgust.
type slowly. 
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