Doe

1
TEAM

We love the sound of cheer.
Palms slapping thighs, bodies hitting the mat, bones
creaking snapping clicking.
We will be old before our time, maybe, but
that is the future, a time we don’t
worry about. Not when
we have circuits to run today and
pyramids to perfect tomorrow and
choreo to memorize yesterday.
Drill it drill it drill it Coach yells.
She’s not afraid to cut girls. No weakness, she tells us in her office
after practices, before games.
No weakness. Physically.
Mentally? We’re hanging on for dear fucking life,
most of us girls are hanging on by our acrylics.
Coach knows. That’s why she gives us
what we need.
Rules and rhythms, running laps
until we sweat, launching back somersaults
straight from standing,
twisting a full three-sixty as we soar through the air,
repeating and repeating
until we can’t breathe.
We are not those shiny girls from TV
we have no trophies no medals no rings
we don’t compete. Don’t have the funds.
Don’t have a school that cares, respects us.
We’re here because
the pressure does something to
our nerves
something painful and warm.
We’re here because
what better way to hurt yourself
than in the pursuit of perfection?

After practice, sweaty, worn thin,
we run more.
Out of the locker room and to the arms of
people who will pretend they love us
for long enough.
Home to whoever’s there, to
the parking lot behind the drive-thru, back seat,
bedroom floor with your best friend,
the one who slept with your ex and lied
but you forgave her because what does it matter when
none of you matter?


2
MARIS

Nell’s waiting on the hood of Maris’s car.
Waiting for Maris after practice
is the kind of thing girlfriends do
but they are not that, won’t ever be,
because Nell is Going Places and Maris
is going to die in this town.
“Hey,” Nell calls out to Maris in that
long, languorous way she has, like she’s
three tequilas deep
on a hundred-degree day,
but that’s just Nell.
Nell, olive skin, sleek dark hair, feline eyes
always watching.
Nell in short skirt, bare legs, no goose bumps
even though it’s October and already cold enough to freeze.
“There’s some trash on my car,”
Maris calls back, and Nell laughs her
dirty smoker laugh although she’s never touched a cig.
Maris walks over, gym bag smacking her splits-sore hip,
waits for Nell to slide down but she doesn’t.
“What took you so long?” Nell says. “Everyone else
left ages ago.”
What took so long?
Maris replays Coach’s voice
snaking into the locker room:“Larsen,
my office.”

Picking at her already bloody cuticles
as she sat across from Coach
with her perfect pink manicure
and listened to her say
“These goddamn grades, Maris.
How many times do I have to say it?
Do you even want to make it to
senior year? Graduate?”
Of course I do.
I want to graduate.
I want to get a job
and an apartment
and live on my own
so the only shit I have to deal with
is mine.
She looks at apartments
when she is bored in class
or in the middle of the night
sleepless and fantasizing.
Has saved
a list
of places with high ceilings
and beautiful golden light
and shiny wooden floors
arranged in pristine patterns.
Manhattan, mostly,
but she doesn’t want to
limit herself
too much. So lately she has widened the search:
Paris
Rome
Barcelona.
She could get a job
one with a fancy title
and a company credit card
and she could live in her pretty apartment
with the golden light
and a doorman who tipped his hat to her
every single day.
Maybe she could. Maybe
some version of her
could.
Out loud she says, “I’ll try harder,”
because Coach looks disappointed
and Maris hates letting her down.
Coach is not warm
or sweet
or any of those things,
but she is the only person in Maris’s life
who cares about her getting out of West Eaton High.
Closer to a mother
than her actual mom.

Coach leans back in her chair
and stares at Maris. Her eyes are
dark, like her long hair, stark against her
pale white skin
not a hint of old teenage acne scarring in sight. “You know,
I gave you captain because you worked
your ass off for it.
You’re only a junior. It should have been
Kate or Claire,
really.” She shrugs. “It was going to be
Kate or Claire
but then you showed me how much you
wanted it.
You showed me how much you cared.
You showed me how much you could
focus.
All you have to do
is take that focus out of the gym
and into the classroom.”
Coach raises an eyebrow.
“It shouldn’t be this hard.”
Maris stands, shoving
the chair she was sitting in away,
legs scraping loudly. “I got it,”
she says,
a heartbeat away from a snarl
but she would never snarl at Coach
unless she wanted to spend all of next practice
running sprints by herself.
“I hear you.”
Coach calls to her before she steps out of the door.
“It wasn’t just the focus,” Coach says.
“You’re a leader. The team—they never looked at
Kate or Claire
the way they look at you.
So lead them, Maris. Be better.
Or do you want them to follow in your footsteps
so you can all fail out together?”

“Captain duties”
is what Maris tells Nell now,
and she knows Nell will believe it
because she doesn’t care enough to question it.
“Come,” Nell beckons, and Maris does
she always does.
Nell kisses Maris, warm mouth, and Maris wishes
like she does too often
that Nell could be a piece of shit just like her.
Then it wouldn’t feel so bad
that Nell refuses to love her back.
Won’t let Maris
drag her down.
“You need a ride?” Maris asks, and Nell
shakes her head.
“Tutoring,” she says.
Yeah, Nell tutors, and Maris
can’t get above a D in math.
“You want to come?”
Maris frowns at her. “What,
come sit by you
while you teach some kid geometry?”
“Yeah,” Nell says, grinning. “Who knows,
maybe you’d even learn something.”
Maris stills, her face
suddenly hot.
Oh, so now Nell
thinks she needs help?
For a horrible second
she imagines Nell in Coach’s office
Coach shaking her head
and Nell saying of course, I understand, I’ll
try my best with her, but
you know what she’s like.
“I don’t need a tutor,” Maris says, her words
clipped.
“I need a—”
She is about to say girlfriend
remembers it is forbidden
instead says, “A fucking break.”
“Fine, don’t come!” Nell says, and then her hands
are reaching for Maris, fingers nipping
at Maris’s waist.
“But I still have a little time first.”
A little time is all it takes
Maris in the passenger seat laid flat
and Nell’s mouth working on her
making her forget all about
bad grades
and tutors
and words she can’t say.
“Call me later,” Nell says
when she’s done, a pleased smile
on her beautiful face
and she leaves Maris lying there
still catching her breath.
Nell is always the one who leaves.


3
TEAM

You can’t make money in town, not
real money, not enough money
for shitty cars and too-tight dresses and
cigarettes and weed.
So we go a couple towns over
to their glass box mall.
We put on nice-girl dresses, heels
low enough to walk in, hair
scraped back, tied up in silk ribbons.
We sell perfume and lipstick and jewels,
bags and espadrilles and tiny bikinis.
Our customers tip us around Christmas and spring break,
feel bad for us not flying to Mexico or
Palm Springs or
Miami.
Our managers call us good girls, like our gloss,
our appropriate necklines.
It’s only after our shifts are done that we
strip.
Back to basics, back to our bones,
hair undone and lips slicked red and feet in battered sneakers,
cutoffs showing so much leg, bras visible through thin tank tops.
Everybody thinks girls like us want to
glow up, grow up.
Why?
We know who we are, what we’re made of.
Don’t want anything different. We’re good at acting,
but when we are in the gym, when we are on the sidelines,
when our bodies are screaming
that’s no act.
That’s everything we are.

We speed.
We go too fast because how else
can you move,
in a place like this,
a world like this,
where girls like us,
if we stop and stay and stand still,
get told we were asking for whatever shit happened to us.
So we keep moving, always
in the gym
on the roads
only stop when we are safe.
In each other’s cars, beds, hearts.
Tonight it’s quiet out,
a Thursday, slow night in town,
before the Friday release
the Saturday flight.
What Friday means to us:
practice, short and intense,
that will leave us crawling on the mats.
Then home, to change
tease our hair, tie it up in high high ponies
finger-comb through curls
paint our lips red, pink, coral, plum
and slip into our uniforms,
always a little too tight,
a belt that says I’m alive.
But tonight, we drive.
October air crisp
through open windows
the road unspooling before us
like it could go on forever
like we could drive and drive
music up and bodies humming
the horizon always on its way
never quite finding us.
In reality it always ends
and we leave each other
on the doorsteps of apartment buildings, houses
that lean, townhomes
dead on the inside.
We brush our teeth, wipe off our makeup,
change our tampons,
get ourselves off,
text our exes
and go to sleep.
One more day.
One more day. That’s it.

On the way home we see a dead deer on the side of the road.
Swear to god those carcasses are
permanent fixture here,
decaying flesh left
to spoil in the sun.
This one’s missing its head.


4
DOE

The creature runs alongside
keeping pace with the car
the one with the girls inside
a shadow matching turn for turn,
mile for mile
although it knows it shouldn’t push itself this way
that its body
is no longer built for such
exertion.
Once upon a time it was
pure power.
The familiar shape of a deer, but outstripping
any other of its kind, grotesque and statuesque
a beast that towered above its prey, that if seen
could send humans fleeing in fear, strike terror
into the marrow—
Well. It could have, if
it could have been seen by all humans
but it could—can—only be seen by a select few. Those
who have the same blood in their veins
that was once
used to bind the creature, bind
its power.
Without those binds
it can only imagine the delicious screams it would coax
from the humans.
At its sheer size, mass,
dark velvet flesh and
crown of antlers
looped with the silk of spiders
home for the creatures that roam
the deer’s flesh, slip
in and out of pockets of
rot.
Bound, though, it remains in a space
between worlds—roaming the earth, this
earth, but invisible to all the humans it sees.
Correction: not to all. There is one—one precious, so
special, so adored.
One who those girls in the car worship
one who has that blood in her veins
that connects her to the creature.
A tie, delicate but tough
diamond bright.
One for whom the deer has
big plans.
But not now, not yet—

For now it just chases, invisible
to the girls in the car
waiting for the time to come
waiting to take
what it wants.