Museum of Falls
By Helen Laser
art by Helen Laser
Whoever thought to call autumn “crisp” deserves the Nobel Prize.
Imagine winning an award for a single word.
Imagine committing such an act of occult evocation that your body flies to Sweden
where there are umbels of apples
shrouded in blonde maple leaves
sequestered by hollow gourds:
their seeds rattling inside like a birthday party for a balloon child.
This word-spinning-jenny deserves a Museum of Falls.
I would make her a room just about soccer practice in 2006
Where she’d wear shin guards that are much too small
where a boy bordering on sociopath pours red gatorade on her head
and tries to pants her
and she’d try to pants him back
but his pants are too tight-strung to pull down
and then she’d go into the car where its warm
and then she’d go into the house where it’s warmer
and I’d peel away her socks like papery band-aid wrappers
and everything is yellow
and the air smells soft
and outside it’s blue.
Helen Laser is a poet and maker of clothing, art, funny voices, and pretty tasty dinners. She has had works published in Referential Magazine, Crab Fat Magazine, The TQ Review, Muses, Inwood Indiana Press, Gone Zine, and Beast Grrl Zine, to name a few. Helen won the 2012 National Silver Medal for Novel-Writing from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In addition to writing her own work, she narrates audiobooks which can be heard on her website: HelenLaser.com She resides in Manhattan with her sweet fiancé Dominic.
