Cyborg Sister, and: The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion

Abstract

Cyborg Sister, and: The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion Jackie Craven (bio) Cyborg Sister Older than me and too iridescent to leave her room,she never answers my knock. I want to crack the doorand touch the edge of her secrets. She eats shadowsin bed. If I close my eyes, I can feel a chitterand thrum of gears, each one small as a baby'stooth. So much artistry went into her construction—tweezers trembling in swaying light, Mama breathingcareful, careful, Daddy unraveling magnificentintestinal springs. Then, the oily scentof her maturation. As her steel frame expanded,polymer threads frayed. Her skin grew thinat the elbows and knees. She must have writhedinside herself, no way to grow until Mama stitchedzippers in the seams. Now I hear the rustleof her molting and I imagine a perfect pointed toestepping out. She hides deprecated apparelin a basement closet. No one speaks of the emptyghosts—an array of sizes and styles—droopingfrom wire hangers. I touch a translucent sleeveand wonder whether she would mind if—But I don't need to wear my sister's castaways.Upstairs, a sewing machine whirrs and Mamacalls my name: Look what I've made for you.See how it flatters your shape? [End Page 51] The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion Quietly at the top of the stairs, two rooms sitback-to-back and pretend to be content. Andso they should be, pillows soft as milkweed,rumpled books tousled in floral sheets. Oneroom—drowsy as honeysuckle—has Nancy'sMysterious Letter. The other—a room that glowslike goldenrod—has The Quest of the MissingMap. But there are no secret letters here, notreasure maps. August presses against leadedglass and curtains wilt in the sun. Wouldn't itbe grand to run away? Behind latched doors—ashush of turning pages. Where to go, how todisappear. Can a room survive without its walls?Neither tells the other. [End Page 52] Jackie Craven Jackie Craven is the author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2018) and a chapbook, Our Lives Became Unmanageable (Omnidawn, 2016), winner of the publisher's Fabulist Fiction Award. Her poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, River Styx, Salamander, Spillway, Water~Stone Review, and elsewhere. She earned her Doctor of Arts in Writing at the University at Albany, NY and worked for many years as a journalist covering architecture, design, and travel. www.JackieCraven.com Copyright © 2020 Pleiades and Pleiades Press