Her Skin is a Costume

By Meg Tuite

Short fiction, character studies, dark humor and a poetic language twist. Meg's collection is startling, engaging and entertaining.
MEg Tuite's writing has appeared in numerous journals including Epiphany, JMWW, Prick of the Spindle, Monkeybicycle, and Boston Literary Magazine. She has been nominated several l times for the Pushcart Prize. She is author of Domestic Apparition (San Francisco Bay Press, 2011), Disparate Pathos (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2012), and Bound By Blue (Sententia Books, 2013). She also won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry Award from Artistically Declined Press for her poetry collection Bare Bulbs Swinging written with Heather Fowler and Michelle Reale (2014). She teaches at the Santa Fe Community Collage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Bird Chapbooks
• Release date: Feb 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311895233

Book preview

HER SKIN IS A COSTUME

By Meg Tuite

Published by Red Bird Chapbooks at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 by Meg Tuite

Art: Josie Adams

Editor: Alida Winternheimer

Discover other titles published by Red Bird Chapbooks at Smashwords.com

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For my sisters, Annie, Bev, and Josie.

Contents

May I Please Be Excused from Reality

No One's Ever Heard of Two Teacher's Pets

Theft

Fish Pants

Going to Visit Mom's Sister, Two States Over

Huge Things Happen

Skunk Weed Cookies

Circulation

Her Skin Is a Costume

Abraham Lincoln Was Really a Woman

Pretend that Your Children Are Simpler Versions of You

Match

How to Disturb the Ecosystem of a Misappropriated Erection

Body of Bread

Mauled by the Malled

Half a Lotus

Eurail Pass

Chicken or Beef?

Better than Bingo

About the Author

Acknowledgements

May I Please Be Excused from Reality

I roll myself into a tight ball and camouflage myself into a knick-knack. Rooms became dense with restraint when Dad comes home.

Whatever life was lived in that apartment before he arrives, vacates itself. All six siblings scurry into silence, shadows. Mom busies herself in the kitchen.

'Where the hell is everybody?"

We crawl out of our corner pockets and make our way to greet him. We nod our heads and all of us situate ourselves quietly in designated chairs at the dining room table like a German train pulling into the station. It is six o'clock exactly. Dinnertime. Dad is always at the head of table. His face bleeds a thousand ulcers as he grimaces over his half glasses at each of us, each wrinkle a perfect slope of the one before it, heading up his forehead and across his cheeks.

Not a word is uttered. We are petrified wood. We pass chicken, potatoes and vegetables around, wait for the man to speak.

So you must have done something productive today, he says as he carefully cuts his chicken, slicing each piece into thin wafers before spearing it with his fork. ''There's got to be some goddamn reason I'm paying for your Catholic education."

George speaks first. Yes sir, school was a piece of shit, sir. I didn't learn a damn thing except how to shoot a wicked spitball at the teacher whenever she turned her back.

The comments move clockwise around the table from oldest to youngest

Yes sir, I beat the crap out of some pansy after he raised his hand and outdid me in a spelling bee! A bloody nose on the playground, but if he told anyone, his ass was etched in concrete, says Mason.

"Yes sir, I put tacks on Miss Box's chair before class. She's the substitute teacher, turns purple like you when she gets mad. She screeched. She made us stay after the bell until somebody came up with the culprit. I gave them a look like one of yours. My