Monday, June 27, 2016

Tamara Linse's "HARD MEN" Photographic Short Story on Crime And the Choice of 15-year old Johnny Good. . .



“Hard Men” from How To Be A Man Stories by Tamara Linse.

Copyright granted by Tamara Linse and Willow Words


                      Left, Tamara Linse.  Attributed to Tamara Linse and copyright granted by Tamara Linse.  Right, jacket cover of How To Be A Man Stories

Guest Blogger Tamara Linse
Short story:  Hard Men

For the hard men who want love but know that it won’t come.
“Shake the Dust,” Anis Mojgani

                                     Anis Mojgani - web logo photo for the piano farm web page. 


Johnny Good shot and killed his cranked-out father.  The tinny smell of the three shots overwhelmed his father’s chemical odor and the smell of bacon from the breakfast Johnny had made, hoping he could get his father to eat, to stop the obsessing, fidgeting, floor-creaking rounds down the trailer house corridor and back while picking at the sores around his thin-lipped grimace.

                     Trailer Park in Wyoming. 

The way his father had died was not like on TV, one shot and then keeled over, not moving. No. Though Johnny had been aiming the pistol for his father’s heart—his father’s left but his right, next the sternum, above the xyphoid process—his adrenalin and shaking hands made him shoot low the first time and hit his father’s belly. He could tell because that’s where the blood began to seep into the once-white cotton undershirt. His father had looked at him, hands spread in surprise, but then bent his head to the side like he had believed his son would do it all along, like he did when Johnny used to creep out of bed and into his parents’ bedroom after lights-out to ask his father a manufactured question to put off sleep a little longer, just so he wouldn’t have to be in his room alone. Johnny imagined him doing that exact head-tip to his high school students when they missed the question, On the periodical table of elements, what does Gd stand for? This was something Johnny hadn’t actually seen because he wasn’t a junior till next year and so hadn’t taken his father’s chemistry class.

Periodical Table of Elements 

After that first shot, his father came after him, hands bared and grasping, so Johnny took a deep breath as adrenalin coursed through him and clenched his hands tightly around the pistol grip to quell the shaking and aimed again and then fired two shots in quick succession. One, at least, hit the target because blood splashed across the microwave and the counter, and then his father went down, first on one knee and then onto his back, and blood gushed out from underneath like water from a hose. The carpet resisted at first, and the blood ran down the sloping floor and pooled under the couch, but then the scotch-guarded fibers gave in and the liquid began to soak and seep. There was so much blood, more blood than Johnny thought possible. His father hadn’t just laid there, though, even as he was bleeding out. He kept trying to get up, his sharp-boned body slopping in the red sticky liquid, his rotted teeth bared, his focus pulling back from Johnny to the middle distance. His attempts got weaker and weaker until he lay there staring upwards, and then he wasn’t staring, though his eyes were open.

          Mock crime scene photo of outline of body.

Johnny knew that his father would kill him. His father had killed the pizza delivery guy the night before with Johnny’s baseball bat. His father had used the baseball bat because he’d left the shotgun in the living room and his pistol out in the truck. Johnny had known the pizza delivery guy a little. His name was Don, short for Donavan. A few years older and already graduated. A good first baseman when they were kids. Lived with his mom in one of those apartments above the stores in Old Town. Tall, skinny, and pimply but with a sense of humor. One time, the guy had lent him a pair of socks for gym class. Now, Johnny knew that he shouldn’t have asked anyone to come anywhere near the house, especially for something as stupid as pizza, and he certainly shouldn’t have invited the guy in. He should’ve heeded the signs, that feeling that shit would happen soon, bad shit. What had he been thinking? Don had smiled at him at the door and said, “Johnny, man, you look like crap.” Which had prompted Johnny to go look for another dollar to tip, which prompted him to invite Don in to wait, which prompted his father to launch from the back of the trailer, bat held high over his head, screaming “Fucking agents of change!”

Stock photo of man with bat.
Photoshopped by Christal Rice Cooper 

It helped that this man his father had become was not at all like the father from before. His father used to wear short-sleeved plaid western shirts in off colors with black and navy blue ties and dress pants. He used to shine his brown leather shoes with a horse-bristle brush, ka-shshsh, ka-shshsh, every Sunday night while watching the news. His body used to sag and paunch from his love of butter brickle ice cream and potatoes fried in bacon grease and drowned in ketchup. This was the father who had insisted Johnny and his little brother Mark, whom everyone called Newt, be at the breakfast table promptly at 6:45 to eat the sausage and eggs or blueberry pancakes their had mother cooked. The father who hugged them goodbye when they were little, and then when they were older he ruffled their hair or put his hand on their shoulders before he walked out the door in the morning. Homework right after dinner and before TV, no exceptions. “Five minutes with Darwin is worth five months sitting with a sitcom,” he said, his brow beetled with sincerity.


But now, his father no longer a person but a thing, lying on the floor with its horrid red shadow. The essential element of life had precipitated, evaporated, something. It was there, and now it was gone, and Johnny had seen it disappear. Johnny felt the urge to try to capture it and put it back. What could he use? A blanket, a butterfly net, a turkey roasting pan? He knew it was illogical just as he glanced around the room for something, anything, to contain it.

   
Drawing of man opening stomach to reveal butterflies.  Photoshopped by Christal Rice Cooper 

And then guilt made Johnny’s body weaken and twinge. Johnny hadn’t saved him. Up until that very last moment, until he saw the look in his father’s eyes, Johnny had believed that it was possible to pull him out of the clutches of this thing that had taken him over. Had he really believed? Well, maybe he had needed to believe. Maybe not belief but hope against all the odds, against the empirical evidence. All he needed to do was separate this thing, this monster, this demon-possession, from the physical body that was his father. His father was still in there. He was. Johnny had seen him, less just recently, but still there in the small gestures—a certain way of sitting on the couch leaning forward, one shoulder propped higher than the other. The habit of softly closing the door and pushing it until it latched with an audible click when he went to the bathroom. Hooking his keys held with two fingers onto the house-shaped brass key holder on the wall next to the door. When they had lived in the house, the hooks had been attached to a wooden mail organizer.

Newspaper photo to coincide with an article about the temperament of men. 

Guilt was quickly replaced by anger. First at his father—but it was all too fresh and there was his father and he couldn’t be angry with his father, only this thing that had overtaken him, and, anyway, anger at his father would bring him to his knees later, much much later. Now, quickly, the anger turned inward. Had he been paying attention, he could’ve sensed it as it shot out of him toward his father and then boomeranged in a wide circle and zeroed in and pierced him cleanly. He should’ve been more prepared, he should’ve thought things through, this could’ve been prevented, it was all his fault. There should’ve been something he could’ve done, or not done.

   Stock photo of teenage boy holding gun

He shouldn’t’ve invited Don in—that was for sure. He shouldn’t’ve borrowed the little .38 from his friend Benji, even if those deliberate and soft-spoken guys his father had been hanging out with kept coming around. His choice to stay with his father instead of moving to California with his mother and Newt—would that have made a difference? Would his father still have ended up dead if he’d ran away with his mother instead of staying to try to save his father? He glanced at his father’s body. It looked like that of a starved and beaten dog—pale skin stretched drum-tight over knobs of bones, oozing sores, lips pulled back to show blackish teeth. Yes. His father would’ve died. No doubt about it. Johnny’s presence in the house neither held him back nor pushed him toward the drug. Johnny’s presence had long been irrelevant.

                         Stock photo of boy holding gun

Now, what to do now? Shifting the pistol to his left hand, Johnny tilted it until he found the safety and with his index finger pressed it on. He stepped over the river of blood and to the couch, set the pistol on an open Sports Illustrated, picked the shotgun up off the cushions, and propped it in the corner made by the couch and the wall. He sat down to think, his knees on his elbows and his chin on the heels of his hands.

      Stock photo of boy sitting on sofa.  Photoshopped by Christal Rice Cooper. 

It had always been his father and him, really. Every family had favorites, sure, but in their case, it was no secret and there had been no apologies. It had been Dad and Johnny and then Mom and Newt. Johnny played baseball and their father came to the games. Newt’s work placed in the art show and their mother attended. Johnny sat on the couch watching basketball with their father, while Newt helped their mother in the kitchen. It was as if their parents were at opposite poles with Johnny and Newt stretched between them, the only thing holding them together. And then not holding them together. There were times that their father was almost enough for Johnny, but then there were other times. He didn’t think to blame his mother, only Newt, and so he and Newt weren’t close. Johnny was also sure that Newt was gay, although the last time Johnny had seen Newt, age 12, seven months ago, Newt was just starting to realize it. Over the course of a year, Newt had become secretive and introverted. Johnny felt bad for all the shit he was going to have to go through, although Johnny had done nothing at school to stop it or to make his brother feel better.

  Film clip from THE WALKING DEAD.  Fair Use Under the United States Copyright Law

The smell from the bathroom, even with the door and the outside window shut and duct-taped, was getting stronger. It was a smell that Johnny would repress until, years later, he would drive windows open by a country trash dump with the ballooning carcasses of dead livestock. The memory of sitting on that stiff couch in the trailer staring at the body of his father surrounded by the stench of the  decomposing lye-soaked body of Donovan in the bathtub will force him to stomp on the brakes and wrench open the door and lean out just in time to spew green-yellow bile onto the gravel. But in the present, there is too much of the shadow of adrenalin in his system for his body to give in.

 Stock photo of mocked dead body in bath tub. Photoshopped by Christal Rice Cooper 

Action. He should be figuring out what to do. He needs to do something. The fact is that he has shot his own father, a once-respected teacher and coach—probably still respected by former students who had moved away and their parents who remembered his knack for communicating the intricacies of valence and chemical structure and his firm but inspiring presence on the basketball court. But Johnny couldn’t think about that now. Not with the man he loved (once loved?) lying before him. In that moment, Johnny was overtaken with tenderness. Daddy tickling his ribs and squeezing his knee as Johnny screamed, “No, Daddy,” in a way that meant, “Yes, Daddy.” Daddy swaying his hips back and forth as he dribbled the ball and gently taunted his son on the concrete pad he had poured on the property of their old house just for that purpose. The story of his father being denied his dream of becoming a nuclear physicist by a small and small-minded college professor. At the thought, Johnny cried fat and sloppy tears. At 15, he had not yet mastered the art of transmuting his pain, not into sorrow but into rage. That would come later, in prison and in a series of menial low-paying jobs. His eyes bathing his face and his shoulders shuddering, he became the 15-year-old boy he was.

Photo of boy crying and holding gun.  Photoshopped by Christal Rice Cooper. 

And then he wanted to call his mom. No. He didn’t want to call her. He wanted her here sitting next to him, her arms wrapped around him like she so often did with Newt, both a gesture of bringing him into her and of excluding the world, Johnny, and his father. What did he want? He wanted to feel safe—that it was the world that those arms suggested, not the world he had started to realize it was. He rubbed the snot dripping from the tip of his nose onto the shoulder of his shirt in a quick and fierce gesture and then fished his cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans. He flipped it open and pushed and held the number four. Yes, he had programmed her number into his speed dial, but this would be the first time he actually dialed it. Number four was the number of people in their family but also the number he had guessed in a game to see whether he or Newt got to go to the grocery store with their mother one Sunday. He had no doubt that had his father not been standing there his mother would have taken Newt and that would’ve been that, but instead it became a game, something his father was fond of, and so held the true number in his mind, because his father would not cheat, and it was Johnny instead of Newt who got to go. And then his mother, for a reason Johnny never knew and never understood, stopped for a flavored ice at the stand in the park and sat on the benches in the shade of the cottonwoods to eat it. Johnny sucked on the straw of his sour apple ice and ignored the siren song of the slide and swings and the kids screaming to sit quietly next to his mother and feel the warmth of her shoulder next to his ear. From then on, he considered the number four not their family’s but his and hers exclusively, and even though he had never called it, he often flipped open his phone and touched it gently with the pad of his index finger, especially on those nights when his father’s friends were over and he sat in his bedroom ignoring his homework and watching the empty chair that he had propped under his doorknob.

    Photo of teenage boy holding cell phone.  Photoshopped by Christal Rice Cooper.

But now he pressed and held the button and it rang once, twice, three times, a fourth, and then someone picked up. “Hello?” It was his mother’s voice, but in it was all the distance between Wyoming and California, all the distance that had always been in their lives. Had she looked at the caller ID and seen his name and still her voice sounded like this? He couldn’t breathe, much less talk. No air came in and he couldn’t force any air out. She said again, “Hello?” This time her voice was quieter, an extended echo of itself, like her mind had moved on and wasn’t even in the thing she was saying. It had moved on to what she would be doing in thirty seconds or that afternoon or on the weekend. Perhaps she would be making corn-flake pork chops for supper? Maybe they were going to that café on the beach to play sand volleyball? Her mind had skittered past the existence of whomever was on the other end of the call. Johnny couldn’t take it anymore. He flipped the phone closed, tossed it onto the couch next to him, and laid back against the cushions with such force that the couch thumped against the wall.

             Photo of boy crying, leaning against wall.  Photoshopped by Christal Rice Cooper 

After the months of gathering evidence, Johnny will be tried as an adult for double murder and sentenced 25 to life in a maximum security prison. While in prison, he will learn that the world is as hard a place as he suspected. He will not be able to go to his father’s funeral, of course, and he won’t be able to go to his mother’s funeral (breast cancer) nor his brother’s funeral (AIDS). He will be released on parole after 22 years on good behavior. Once he is out, he’ll find the world a confusing and unstructured place. He will never marry because he cannot bring himself to trust anyone to live in the same space he does. And of course he will die alone, like we all do. But he doesn’t know this, sitting here on the couch. In his mind, he is not a criminal, a person flawed and innately dangerous. That will come later. Sitting on the couch, he is a sophomore in high school, a member of the honor society who likes to play baseball and hang out with friends in the gym at the rec center, who has his eye on a girl who likes to wear purple capri pants and whose thin shoulders are striped with multiple pigtails, who looks forward to someday maybe being a teacher like his old man because it seems like a cool thing to do. Even these last couple of months has not taken that away.

Newspaper image to coincide with story of youths in jail.

It remained for him to decide what to do. The most logical thing was to run. Was it really his fault? Any one of the guys who stopped by the house could’ve done it. The cops had arrested his father enough times to know about that. And Donovan decomposing in the bathtub—it was logical that Johnny’s father had at least arranged it, as he was the one who knew about chemistry and that industrial-grade lye stolen from the high school AP lab would do the trick. Would they think that his father had killed Don? The baseball bat had been tossed into an open field, so no fingerprints or blood to point one direction or another. He could wipe down the gun and walk out the door, shutting it behind him so hopefully no one would smell anything for days, giving him a head start. He’d take the bike because they’d trace a car and the money his father had in his wallet for his next buy and some food and water. It would just take a couple of days to bike to the cabin he’d once gone to with Benji, an old broken down thing way off the beaten path. He’d stay till he ran out of food. That would give him time to figure things out.


What was he thinking? This wasn’t a cop show. He had killed his father, and if there was one thing his father had taught him, it was that there were no shortcuts. It didn’t matter if you tried to get out of things, to find a way to skirt your duties—you would face the consequences. If you stole candy at in the grocery line, it didn’t matter if you quickly stuffed it into your mouth. You had to tell the manager and then work there after school every Tuesday for a month to learn the value of what you had stolen. If you didn’t study for the algebra test, your grade would reflect your efforts. But if you did what was right—put in the time on the court practicing your jump shot or in the library reading the history of the Trojan War—the world was such a place that you would be rewarded. No. Better to stand up and take it, to face the problem head on and take the punishment as a man would. It didn’t matter what his father was now—what mattered was what he had been and what he had taught Johnny to be.


        His eyes wide in their innocence, Johnny picked up his cell phone, flipped it open, and dialed 911.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

The poem "TORNADOS" Legendary Poet Thylias Moss Is "Tornado" Dancing Her Way From Michigan to Florida . . . .

Christal Cooper

Poem copyright granted by Thylias Moss

All images are given copyright privilege by Thylias Moss unless otherwise noted.



Guest Blogger Poet Thylias Moss:
Dancing through “Tornados”

 Tornado by Irving Wolfson in 1940.  Charcoal on paper


Tornados

Truth is, I envy them
not because they dance; I out jitterbug them
as I'm shuttled through and through legs
strong as looms, weaving time. They
do black more justice than I, frenzy
of conductor of philharmonic and electricity, hair
on end, result of the charge when horns and strings release
the pent up Beethoven and Mozart. Ions played

instead of notes. The movement
is not wrath, not hormone swarm because
I saw my first forming above the church a surrogate
steeple. The morning of my first baptism and
salvation already tangible, funnel for the spirit
coming into me without losing a drop, my black
guardian angel come to rescue me before all the words

get out, I looked over Jordan and what did I see coming for
to carry me home. Regardez
, it all comes back, even the first
grade French, when the tornado stirs up the past, bewitched spoon
lost in its own spin, like a roulette wheel that won't
be steered like the world. They drove me underground,
tornado watches and warnings, atomic bomb drills. Adult
storms so I had to leave the room. Truth is

the tornado is a perfect nappy curl, tightly wound,
spinning wildly when I try to tamper with its nature, shunning
the hot comb and pressing oil even though if absolutely straight
I'd have the longest hair in the world. Bouffant tornadic
crown taking the royal path on a trip to town, stroll down
Tornado Alley where it intersects Memory Lane. Smoky spirit-
clouds, shadows searching for what cast them.


THYLIAS MOSS SPEAKS ON “TORNADOS”
“Please understand I am making the most difficult and necessary decision in my life, as if I live inside a tornado, so much sucking and swirling of many things I thought I knew, and now, I'm about to embark on an adventure that I can't see clearly at all.  Selling my house (in Michigan), and moving to a location I do not know yet. I am not running from something, but to something, and I don’t know for sure what that is. Or necessarily who that is if in fact I do run to someone...

Shadow of Thylias Moss
At the University of Michigan Museum of Arts 
                                      
I must thank my former student, now my friend Eliana Rina for offering me a place with her in Orlando, Florida.

                              Facebook Logo page for Eliana Rina 
Tornado winds are among the most destructive, but what I really want is to feel the calm of days, and once and for all settle into a retirement not from life, but to participate in life more fully than ever...

   

This weekend, I should hear something about my romance novel, a romance with a person yes, but even more, a romance with life, and I want both of these romances that are often one-in-the same to have their best opportunity for success --which I also want for my son whom I love more than anything in the world, and since his birth, 25 years ago next month, this will be our first separation from the lives of each other.

                          Thylias Moss and her son on his 23rd birthday.


But that too is good for him, and with all these tornadic gestures, like the one that relocated Dorothy in Oz --is that really where I want to go, knowing that all Dorothy wanted to do was go "home"? --think that's what I also want, to be in that place that I feel is home, a sense of belonging where all aspects of my life have a chance.

                
Growing up in the Midwest, I was always privy to tornado watches and warnings, and I took these seriously. Tornado "Watch" --and that's just what I did, venturing outside and watching the sky for curls, a monstrous Shirley Temple; I had a place for myself staked out in the basements of the houses in which I grew up. although these watches seldom turned to warnings, I always believed they could... Was I lucky or just something else? I was never sure... But tornadoes in my mind were nasty roots, that also did what other forces seemed unable to achieve, completely change the landscape, drive straws into wood, and I was fascinated by such power, power that I would never have.

Left, Thylias Moss, age 5, sitting in the world's largest finback chair from May Company.  Right, Photograph of the tornado in Ponca City, Oklahoma between the years of 1890-1920.  Library of Congress. 


There was that time, of course, the most important time really, other than the Wizard of OZ, and once again in that movie the positive force that tornadoes could be; what a ride Dorothy had --I was more affected by the Judy Garland film than by a later incarnation, The Wiz with Michael Jackson and Diana Ross.



I really did believe in rainbows, the colors, as many as in my own genetics; I liked the form of embrace, and a tornado embraced things also, though somewhat violently in most depictions I knew of; but I could also envision another side of them, searching for their partners --and I guess that is what I am also doing, searching for my partner. And this is where things get a bit tricky. Just who is my partner? --and do I really have one?   having me re-visit this poem right now, causes what's present in my present and the poem to converge; this isn't a neat convergence at all, but this is all about my tornado life! --and that ability of a tornado to churn practically anything into itself.

                      Photo of a tornado sucking in a rainbow.

My father, how I still miss that man, and I'm going to write about him, as soon as I'm located somewhere, but my father and I would watch the skies, and one morning saw a funnel form above the church, "a surrogate steeple" , white rope swaying there, like movement of a supernatural choir; that swaying in midair, and it never touched ground, never became debris-filled, and dirty, soiled, really, taking on colors of life, and churning all of it up into a monstrous salad that no one would ever eat, that no one could eat...

Thylias Moss and her father Calvin Braiser, left as a little girl, and right on her wedding day in 1973.

And for me, the tornados were, are hair --as thick and dense as mine. and I liked that hair could have such power, and with my incredible bounty of hair right now, the butt-kissing hair, I am aware of having two tornado braids, one on each side of my head, and they try to spin as I walk --what incredible dancers tornadoes are; I can envision a chorus line of them easily... not staying in sync --I admire their apparent disobedience, although I was an exceptionally obedient child. "My black guardian angel" --I wanted to explore, exploit sonic power! --the cube root of everything, crazy banana, crazy dancing banana...



Now, I'm all thinking of the Lee Ann Womack song: “I Hope You Dance" --yes; living might be taking chances, but they're worth taking, and loving might be a mistake, but it's worth making" --tornados know this. --when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance. And that is what I want with this poem, with my life. "Dance!"


Tornados were always on my mind, every spring, I paid attention to where tornadoes were, and the way that they rotated and gyrated --how sexy those storms were, and I recall when people I cared abut were involved in twisters. 1974, Xenia Ohio, as in this YouTube video:
                                The tornado as it is hitting downtown Xenia moving toward the old Xenia High School.  This photo was taken by Kitty Marchant on Murray Hill Dr. The houses in the foreground are on Eavey St. and the large red brick structure is a house on S. Columbus St.

I typed the poem “Tornados”, had ceased handwriting poems some years ago. I believe I wrote it (in the) daytime; only the romance novel has kept me up, a tornado in my mind the way it has the ability to churn up into itself, a wall cloud if ever..rotating, gyrating, dancing...”



BIOGHRAPHY of THYLIAS MOSS
Thylias Moss was born in 1954, during a blizzard, in Cleveland, Ohio at Mount Sinai Hospital, Thylias Moss began to write when she was seven years old, and continued, ultimately graduating from Oberlin College in 1981, and from Grad School at the University of New Hampshire in 1983, the same year her first volume of poetry: Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman was published.

                                  Thylias Moss in 1983

Only 4 feet 10 inches tall, she combats this vertical challenge with making big, and has published 10 books, encouraged by winning $25.00 in a Cleveland Public Library Contest for "The Problem with Loving a Ghost of a Sailor" when she was 17 years old--best $25.00 ever!

                                 Thylias Moss, age 17 

She has won many awards, including: "The Dewars Profiles Performance Artist's Award in Poetry" for "Poem for My Mother's and other makers of Asafetida" several Pushcart Prizes, and multiple inclusions in the Best American Poetry Series. She has also won a Whiting Writer's Award, an NEA Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship in 1996. Currently she is involved in limited forking.

Thylias Moss in 1996 posing in a storm drain in Toronto, Ontario, 1994

She was most pleased with her inclusion in the film: "The United States of Poetry" shown on PBS. Clips from my inclusion are among my videos: "9:08 Am - Nagging Misunderstanding: and "Green Light and Gamma Ways".

             Thylias Moss dressed for The United States Poetry premier. 

The "Fork" video was made to accompany my essay in "One Word" --although I mostly wrote about "forking" my essay is entitled "sixpack"

                        "eye of fork" (Pro-forker) "Forker Gryle" --in  her office at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,  Photograph taken by Thylias Moss’s son.

You can see her video "poams" –(products of acts of making) on the forker girl youtube channel. and if you search for "limited fork" online, whatever you find is likely about Thylias Moss.



BOOKS by THYLIAS MOSS
Thylias Moss has also published eight poetry collections with her ninth collection, Wannabie Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code schedule to be released on September 13, 2016 by Persea.

                                                     Web logo for Persea Books.              


         She’s also published a children’s book titled I Want To Be and her memoir Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress

Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman (1983)


Pyramid of Bone (1989)


At Redbones (1990)


Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky (1991)


Small Congregations: New and Selected Poems (1993)


Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler (1999)


Slave Moth A Narrative In Verse (February of 2006)


Tokyo Butler (December of 2006)


Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code (September 13, 2016)


I Want to Be (1998)


Tale of a Sky-blue Dress (1998)