He had a surprisingly big build for an artist,
he’d always been older than me. I imagine he still
is though I live abroad now and there are time differences.
A wife may have been involved and I know
a blood blue liquid was swallowed. Regardless.
It was a dirty rotten trick for him to slide
Anthony Perkins from under a sheet (he knew
I had a weakness for weak men) and use him
to blur the boundaries of friend and lover,
sister and brother, oil and water, colour
and colourlessness. Pain and pleasure
were present too, but that’s often the case when art and bodies,
thin or otherwise, bang themselves onto walls.
—Christine Brandel
Christine Brandel is a British-American writer whose work has appeared in literary magazines on both sides of the Atlantic and online. She rants and raves through her character Agatha Whitt-Wellington (Miss) at EveryoneNeedsAnAlgonquin and writes about comedy at PopMatters.
Read more of Ms Brandel’s poetry in our downloadable digital edition.