PROSE POETRY
RIKKI SANTER
RIKKI SANTER
DEAR TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE STARRING ME
Today looks like snow but let’s start in the middle and cherry-pick points from the Freytag, like my crawling supermarket aisles on my knees picking up change that rolled under shelves crowded with condiments and boxed short-cuts. The first act should also be about how I lie to be kind, especially to department store mannequins because my boyfriend is hard to love, but so am I. There’s got to be lots of mirrors: at garden trellis, on bedroom ceiling, in mailbox, and probably a hall of infinity mirrors just like when Charles Kane made his last somber strides to infamy. My director will know how to tease out metaphor and the stubborn indulgence of subtext. And I guess I’ll have to take up smoking Chesterfields, just as long as I don’t have to stand outside in the cold for drags between snowflakes. Act Two should feature close-ups of things I distrust like time-released diet pills, my favorite soup pot after it boils dry, my tap shoes performing for guests in a childhood living room, and quick cuts of my elbow tattooed with a black & white spiral. And for the final scene, a 1940s bebop sax wailing, iced with my closing voice-over as I face a fourth wall lamenting how to traffic through a moral clause as malleable as the wind blows. Outside my window, tracks in the snow and the
quiet glory of bright cardinals in branches.
Rikki Santer's poetry has appeared in various publications including Poetry East, [PANK], Crab Orchard Review, Hotel Amerika and The Main Street Rag. Her work has received many honors including five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her eighth collection, Drop Jaw, inspired by the art of ventriloquism, was published this past spring by NightBallet Press.