Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

1

We were going to. After switching damaging recover. (we need more pronouns.) Grass aches against the epicentre of baldness. Since, may, continuous, concede. (Mother. Move your hair. The bald spot is showing.) To abnormalise: (Describe the worst event in your childhood.) To thaw pre-frozen emotion: (Imagine you’ve just won a prize. What do your parents say.)

 

2

“No” lacks a bloodstream, she forgets it can be a complete sentence. A part and apart. Come to dinner, we’re having the skulls of mushrooms. (But there’s no room for me.) Socialise, generalise, compromise, improvise, circumcise, no surely not. Appetiser: what do you do, I mean for a living, no, what do you really do. (But I don’t take up any room.) My blood is too loud, I can’t think. (Dinner parties are not parties. Parties are not parties either.) She takes the long way home. (I’m sorry, I can’t come to dinner tonight, I’m going to get a headache.)

 

3

She plays the cello inside a cell (inside a cell). Membrane, member, are you are member of this family or an appendage. Invest, test, best, modest, crest. The child broke. The child broke her wrist. (If it hadn’t been for that injury, you’d have been a “star”) (If it hadn’t been for that injury, I’d have been a “star”).

 

 

By Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

lives in Auckland. Her first book, Autobiography of a Marguerite, has recently been published by Hue & Cry Press. The footnotes in the work here use found material from novels by Marguerite Duras and Marguerite Yourcenar.