Showing posts sorted by date for query jenny morelli. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query jenny morelli. Sort by relevance Show all posts
The Grocery List
by Jenny Morelli
I grab Mom’s list and limp out the door.
Hotwire Dad’s truck.
Roll over loose gravel quiet as I can.
Two lefts. One right to the corner store.
Old Sophia nods at me, her lips a tight straight line.
I start with day-old bread. Peanut butter. Jelly.
Next, eggs and orange juice.
No. Grape juice won’t hurt my split lip.
Wait. Can’t forget frozen peas.
Two bags. One for Mom’s face. One for mine.
Duct tape’s less than bandaids.
Old Sophia shakes her head. "Not enough for aspirin, hon."
My shoulders sink.
She slips a pack of cookies into the Have a Nice Day bag.
Slides it to me, her smile sad and forced.
"Thanks," I croak as I leave.
I pull out a cookie for the ride home.
━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything and loves to spin fantastically weird tales. She’s published in several print and online literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website:JennyMorelliWrites.com
I grab Mom’s list and limp out the door.
Hotwire Dad’s truck.
Roll over loose gravel quiet as I can.
Two lefts. One right to the corner store.
Old Sophia nods at me, her lips a tight straight line.
I start with day-old bread. Peanut butter. Jelly.
Next, eggs and orange juice.
No. Grape juice won’t hurt my split lip.
Wait. Can’t forget frozen peas.
Two bags. One for Mom’s face. One for mine.
Duct tape’s less than bandaids.
Old Sophia shakes her head. "Not enough for aspirin, hon."
My shoulders sink.
She slips a pack of cookies into the Have a Nice Day bag.
Slides it to me, her smile sad and forced.
"Thanks," I croak as I leave.
I pull out a cookie for the ride home.
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything and loves to spin fantastically weird tales. She’s published in several print and online literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website:JennyMorelliWrites.com
You're Back
by Jenny Morelli
I feel you before I see you.
You approach with great caution. Curl your fingers around the rusted chain link fence like you did back then. Your feet crunch loose gravel. Fingers run along the jangly fence like a xylophone until finally, you pause.
You pause because you feel me.
You pause because you remember.
You straighten your back when I heave. Dried leaves rustle into a frenzy with my wind whispers. I remember, too.
You shrug off the breeze.
You’re the one who did this! I gust.
You gasp, eyes wide. Skittering twigs circle, bite your ankles. Bare tree branches click-clack. Come closer.
Come closer...
Your feet heed my call. You shake your head. Squeeze your eyes closed. Dig your heels into mud as I pull and pull and pull you toward the murky-watered pit.
Come to me, I moan in the stiff breeze.
You dig and claw and crawl away.
Do you remember yet? It was you and your friends. Three clueless kids with formidable imaginations. Your shadows long like capes.
Like witches’ cloaks.
You clutch your head as lightning bolt memories pierce your temples.
You studied the pit. Pointed. Named what bobbed within. Twisted tricycle. Filthy sneakers. Tattered doll missing an eye.
You told stories. Giggled through your ghastly games. Turned serious when blades drew blood and sisterhood was sworn; declared this trench the Blood Bath.
Then crows came and cawed their cautions.
You left. Moved on. Forgot.
But now, you’re all back, as if you felt my pull in your endless, relentless nightmares.
You shiver. Search for the others. A pine breeze prickles goosebumps on your arms, snakes its scent into your nostrils as shadows writhe in the descending dusk.
You left, I groan. You left, and I’ve been wanting and wishing and waiting.
You fall to your knees on the edge of this quagmire, on the edge of sanity, as I churn in my liquid grave.
You beg forgiveness. Tears carve down your cheeks as you sob your sorries.
I climb and claw from the muddy maw. Emerge soaked and moldy, decrepit, corroded. I right myself. Pedal my trike. Clink my bent bike bell and giggle merrily.
You flinch. Kick sticks and leaves and muck to retreat, but it’s too late.
My pull is too strong. I pedal around you once, twice, thrice as shadows advance. My shoelaces trail crazy-eights, weaving around your wrists, your ankles.
We pull you. Squelch.
We drag you. Squish.
Bell clinks as I tug your tied limbs into my boggy bath.
You scrape through squidgy swamp, but I’m stronger than you.
I’m stronger because you remember.
I’m stronger because you believe.
I’m stronger because I know what you did.
I’m stronger because you’re the last, and now you’re back.
Stay, sigh your silhouetted sisters.
Stay, I sing, as you sink below the surface.
━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything and loves to spin fantastically weird tales. She’s published in several print and online literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website: JennyMorelliWrites.com
I feel you before I see you.
You approach with great caution. Curl your fingers around the rusted chain link fence like you did back then. Your feet crunch loose gravel. Fingers run along the jangly fence like a xylophone until finally, you pause.
You pause because you feel me.
You pause because you remember.
You straighten your back when I heave. Dried leaves rustle into a frenzy with my wind whispers. I remember, too.
You shrug off the breeze.
You’re the one who did this! I gust.
You gasp, eyes wide. Skittering twigs circle, bite your ankles. Bare tree branches click-clack. Come closer.
Come closer...
Your feet heed my call. You shake your head. Squeeze your eyes closed. Dig your heels into mud as I pull and pull and pull you toward the murky-watered pit.
Come to me, I moan in the stiff breeze.
You dig and claw and crawl away.
Do you remember yet? It was you and your friends. Three clueless kids with formidable imaginations. Your shadows long like capes.
Like witches’ cloaks.
You clutch your head as lightning bolt memories pierce your temples.
You studied the pit. Pointed. Named what bobbed within. Twisted tricycle. Filthy sneakers. Tattered doll missing an eye.
You told stories. Giggled through your ghastly games. Turned serious when blades drew blood and sisterhood was sworn; declared this trench the Blood Bath.
Then crows came and cawed their cautions.
You left. Moved on. Forgot.
But now, you’re all back, as if you felt my pull in your endless, relentless nightmares.
You shiver. Search for the others. A pine breeze prickles goosebumps on your arms, snakes its scent into your nostrils as shadows writhe in the descending dusk.
You left, I groan. You left, and I’ve been wanting and wishing and waiting.
You fall to your knees on the edge of this quagmire, on the edge of sanity, as I churn in my liquid grave.
You beg forgiveness. Tears carve down your cheeks as you sob your sorries.
I climb and claw from the muddy maw. Emerge soaked and moldy, decrepit, corroded. I right myself. Pedal my trike. Clink my bent bike bell and giggle merrily.
You flinch. Kick sticks and leaves and muck to retreat, but it’s too late.
My pull is too strong. I pedal around you once, twice, thrice as shadows advance. My shoelaces trail crazy-eights, weaving around your wrists, your ankles.
We pull you. Squelch.
We drag you. Squish.
Bell clinks as I tug your tied limbs into my boggy bath.
You scrape through squidgy swamp, but I’m stronger than you.
I’m stronger because you remember.
I’m stronger because you believe.
I’m stronger because I know what you did.
I’m stronger because you’re the last, and now you’re back.
Stay, sigh your silhouetted sisters.
Stay, I sing, as you sink below the surface.
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything and loves to spin fantastically weird tales. She’s published in several print and online literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website: JennyMorelliWrites.com
After
by Jenny Morelli
Since that November, civilized discussions have failed and all there’s left to do is eat ice cream, watch Lifetime movies, and shower in the stillness of our house among the hills where we absconded after that fateful day.
We’ve escaped what once was and still is for those who steered right and not left, but sometimes, when the air feels cold and thin and clear, I’m compelled to yell from the hilltops ‘Doesn’t this hate and blame and paranoia ring a bell?’ or wander back to that place that was once ours because she was certain, that friend I once had, that things wouldn’t change, but back then, they couldn’t see, those most delusional, who are now watching through their binoculars, paranoia perched on their shoulders.
They’re watching, I’m sure, and waiting for us, although we’ve never returned; haven’t and couldn’t and wouldn’t, because it wouldn’t be a return. What we left is gone, and what remains was left behind by us, who’ve been left behind by them.
So here we sit, nestled safely between the indifferent hills where the pages from our stories have been blown wide open, eagerly inviting us to write our own future, one where we can live in peace and tolerance, acceptance and uniqueness, because we remain the enlightened ones, and our future, despite our precipitous present, will need to know that we were the brave ones who left so we could write.
We are the ones diminished from the deaths of those who fell for simply being who they were. We are the ones who embrace mankind.
We are the ones for whom the bell tolls, not the cowards who stayed and prayed and slayed, and we are the ones who’ll live on long after our demise, so that others can learn.
━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything, including her nightmares. She’s published in several literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website: JennyMorelliWrites.com
Since that November, civilized discussions have failed and all there’s left to do is eat ice cream, watch Lifetime movies, and shower in the stillness of our house among the hills where we absconded after that fateful day.
We’ve escaped what once was and still is for those who steered right and not left, but sometimes, when the air feels cold and thin and clear, I’m compelled to yell from the hilltops ‘Doesn’t this hate and blame and paranoia ring a bell?’ or wander back to that place that was once ours because she was certain, that friend I once had, that things wouldn’t change, but back then, they couldn’t see, those most delusional, who are now watching through their binoculars, paranoia perched on their shoulders.
They’re watching, I’m sure, and waiting for us, although we’ve never returned; haven’t and couldn’t and wouldn’t, because it wouldn’t be a return. What we left is gone, and what remains was left behind by us, who’ve been left behind by them.
So here we sit, nestled safely between the indifferent hills where the pages from our stories have been blown wide open, eagerly inviting us to write our own future, one where we can live in peace and tolerance, acceptance and uniqueness, because we remain the enlightened ones, and our future, despite our precipitous present, will need to know that we were the brave ones who left so we could write.
We are the ones diminished from the deaths of those who fell for simply being who they were. We are the ones who embrace mankind.
We are the ones for whom the bell tolls, not the cowards who stayed and prayed and slayed, and we are the ones who’ll live on long after our demise, so that others can learn.
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything, including her nightmares. She’s published in several literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website: JennyMorelliWrites.com
Drift Away
by Jenny Morelli
Another late work night has me driving home way past my bedtime and I’m finding it hard to keep my eyes open.
I keep drifting off and wondering whodunit in the book I’m reading, which is right now splayed out on the passenger seat. I’m lost in thought as the miles tick by when my nightmare introduces itself, pounding my car with a wind-whipping storm. I struggle to find the lane lines to avoid drifting into other cars. To calm myself, I reach for a wedge of my snack-portioned apple from my vintage Snoopy backpack and crunch-crunch-crunch to the beat of the hard-working windshield wipers as my car slips and sloshes slowly up the bridge.
I’m soon funneled into a merging lane as blinding-bright flashing lights redirect traffic away from the crumbling cement wall separating the southbound lanes from northbound. Startled, I overcorrect my steering when a wiper-wand breaks free from my windshield, flying off into the night. Fat raindrops continue with a vengeance sluicing down the glass in hypnotic patterns that draw my attention away from the road.
My biggest fears collide like the bolts of lightning stabbing the ground as I hydroplane into a painfully powerless drift, drift, drift from one lane to the next until there are no more lanes and I’m screeching into the metallic barrier. Careening over the edge of time and space and I’m falling. Freewheeling. Flying.
Before I can register all that’s transpiring, I’m smashing into my steering wheel as my car splashes into the indifferent waters, a white spiderweb appearing and growing and spreading across my windshield. Blood trickles from my forehead into my eyes as a red void presses in around me, sucks me down, swallows me into its abyss, into a great unknown, into a great beyond, and I float, suspended, with Snoopy at my side.
I float and flounder inside my car, pingponging from front to rear, from side to side, as reality pressures in around me, and without a whimper, without a scream, with just the slightest of apple-scented inhales. I close my eyes and embrace the implosion. Let the briny blanket of the sea cocoon me as the book I’d been reading slams into my face. Splays open to the last page, the one that reveals who, in fact, has dunit as I drift away into the deepest annals of time, of space, of oblivion.
━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything and loves to spin fantastically weird tales. She’s published in several print and online literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website: JennyMorelliWrites.com
Another late work night has me driving home way past my bedtime and I’m finding it hard to keep my eyes open.
I keep drifting off and wondering whodunit in the book I’m reading, which is right now splayed out on the passenger seat. I’m lost in thought as the miles tick by when my nightmare introduces itself, pounding my car with a wind-whipping storm. I struggle to find the lane lines to avoid drifting into other cars. To calm myself, I reach for a wedge of my snack-portioned apple from my vintage Snoopy backpack and crunch-crunch-crunch to the beat of the hard-working windshield wipers as my car slips and sloshes slowly up the bridge.
I’m soon funneled into a merging lane as blinding-bright flashing lights redirect traffic away from the crumbling cement wall separating the southbound lanes from northbound. Startled, I overcorrect my steering when a wiper-wand breaks free from my windshield, flying off into the night. Fat raindrops continue with a vengeance sluicing down the glass in hypnotic patterns that draw my attention away from the road.
My biggest fears collide like the bolts of lightning stabbing the ground as I hydroplane into a painfully powerless drift, drift, drift from one lane to the next until there are no more lanes and I’m screeching into the metallic barrier. Careening over the edge of time and space and I’m falling. Freewheeling. Flying.
Before I can register all that’s transpiring, I’m smashing into my steering wheel as my car splashes into the indifferent waters, a white spiderweb appearing and growing and spreading across my windshield. Blood trickles from my forehead into my eyes as a red void presses in around me, sucks me down, swallows me into its abyss, into a great unknown, into a great beyond, and I float, suspended, with Snoopy at my side.
I float and flounder inside my car, pingponging from front to rear, from side to side, as reality pressures in around me, and without a whimper, without a scream, with just the slightest of apple-scented inhales. I close my eyes and embrace the implosion. Let the briny blanket of the sea cocoon me as the book I’d been reading slams into my face. Splays open to the last page, the one that reveals who, in fact, has dunit as I drift away into the deepest annals of time, of space, of oblivion.
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything and loves to spin fantastically weird tales. She’s published in several print and online literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website: JennyMorelliWrites.com
The Murder
by Jenny Morelli
There’s a hawk in the overfull parking lot when I pull in, and it’s glaring, at me, as if daring me to approach one of the few available spots.
I try to give it a wide berth as I roll toward it; try to give it a chance to flee, but it stands its ground.
So I let him win and reverse quietly away, drive farther into the lot and right into a murder of crows, sprawled into a lake-sized splotch on the asphalt at the dead-end of the strip mall. I stop and park, straddling a speed bump and just not caring because there’s no way I’m driving anywhere near that.
And then I wait, shifting my gaze from them to the sky, almost expecting it to collapse around me.
Soon, a car pulls up next to me, the wrong way on this small strip of driveable space. He rolls down his window and says something I don’t quite hear because I’m distracted by what’s dangling by strings taped to the ceiling of his rundown sedan.
Bug spray bottles. Too many to count.
They’re still swaying from his hard stop, some banging into his sweat-soaked mop of hair.
He’s utterly unfazed by this as he yells to me. ‘Excuse me.’
And then I study him. He’s also wearing bug spray, and I don’t mean that he’s sprayed it onto his skin, but that they’re strung around him in a long necklace. Over ten of them that I can see, just draped around his neck, all sizes Off and Deet and Ben’s and Repel.
‘Excuse me,’ he repeats when I can’t find a proper response. ‘I noticed you don’t have the proper protection against them.’
Huh?
His sunshaded face and half-smile intermittently appear among the dangling swaying bottled chemicals.
‘What…what?’ I ask.
It’s the only word I can squeeze past my confusion.
He cocks his head as if confused by my confusion. ‘You can’t get through them without something,’ he explains, pointing toward the bird-infested parking lot. ‘And they don’t make bird repellent, so…’
The hawk is perched on a streetlight above them, as if lording over them, or maybe… controlling them?
‘Heads up!’
Huh? Oompf. I’m struck by something hard. A small bottle of bug spray, of course.
‘Um, thanks?’ I say.
He nods. Smiles wider. ‘Your porch is the only safe place, Miss.’
‘My… porch?’
‘You better hurry,’ he continues without explanation. ‘Sun’s almost gone.’
Okay. I slowly reverse over the speed hump, now more unsettled by the strange boy with sunshades and bug sprays than I am by the crows who seemed to have inched closer to our cars as we talked, like a giant growing, flowing ink spot.
Once clear of the car next to me, I turn around and tear out of this parking lot, out of this story, and head the hell home…
…silently followed by that single hawk and its murder of crows.
━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything, including her nightmares. She’s published in several literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website: JennyMorelliWrites.com
There’s a hawk in the overfull parking lot when I pull in, and it’s glaring, at me, as if daring me to approach one of the few available spots.
I try to give it a wide berth as I roll toward it; try to give it a chance to flee, but it stands its ground.
So I let him win and reverse quietly away, drive farther into the lot and right into a murder of crows, sprawled into a lake-sized splotch on the asphalt at the dead-end of the strip mall. I stop and park, straddling a speed bump and just not caring because there’s no way I’m driving anywhere near that.
And then I wait, shifting my gaze from them to the sky, almost expecting it to collapse around me.
Soon, a car pulls up next to me, the wrong way on this small strip of driveable space. He rolls down his window and says something I don’t quite hear because I’m distracted by what’s dangling by strings taped to the ceiling of his rundown sedan.
Bug spray bottles. Too many to count.
They’re still swaying from his hard stop, some banging into his sweat-soaked mop of hair.
He’s utterly unfazed by this as he yells to me. ‘Excuse me.’
And then I study him. He’s also wearing bug spray, and I don’t mean that he’s sprayed it onto his skin, but that they’re strung around him in a long necklace. Over ten of them that I can see, just draped around his neck, all sizes Off and Deet and Ben’s and Repel.
‘Excuse me,’ he repeats when I can’t find a proper response. ‘I noticed you don’t have the proper protection against them.’
Huh?
His sunshaded face and half-smile intermittently appear among the dangling swaying bottled chemicals.
‘What…what?’ I ask.
It’s the only word I can squeeze past my confusion.
He cocks his head as if confused by my confusion. ‘You can’t get through them without something,’ he explains, pointing toward the bird-infested parking lot. ‘And they don’t make bird repellent, so…’
The hawk is perched on a streetlight above them, as if lording over them, or maybe… controlling them?
‘Heads up!’
Huh? Oompf. I’m struck by something hard. A small bottle of bug spray, of course.
‘Um, thanks?’ I say.
He nods. Smiles wider. ‘Your porch is the only safe place, Miss.’
‘My… porch?’
‘You better hurry,’ he continues without explanation. ‘Sun’s almost gone.’
Okay. I slowly reverse over the speed hump, now more unsettled by the strange boy with sunshades and bug sprays than I am by the crows who seemed to have inched closer to our cars as we talked, like a giant growing, flowing ink spot.
Once clear of the car next to me, I turn around and tear out of this parking lot, out of this story, and head the hell home…
…silently followed by that single hawk and its murder of crows.
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything, including her nightmares. She’s published in several literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website: JennyMorelliWrites.com
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