True Fiction: A Pseudo Autobiographical Chapbook in Three Parts

By Carroll Ann Susco

This chapbook is mainly about women, from multiple angles. It takes a feminist, multicultural perspective that explodes conceptions of women throughout history. It gives voice, irreverently, to women who got ripped off in the history books or the Bible. Or in the culture. It's important and soothing to hear these women to me, and I try to give voice to women who can heal our culture, our understanding, our relationships, our lives, and ourselves . They are my muses and they speak of injustices that I cannot. They tell truths that nonfiction does not. They are whispering, yelling, or comforting us. I hope you find solace in the writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carroll Ann Susco
• Release date: Mar 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311944016

Carroll Ann Susco

Carroll Ann Susco holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh and has a chapbook, Bean Spiller, on Variant Literature press and numerous publications, including in The Sun Magazine, Cutbank and Painted Bride Quarterly. Her books are available below: Love Attempts and Stigmata and Other Essays. She likes to teach and tutor, read and watch a good movie. And do stuff. Like go to a wine bar :)

Book preview

Section I: Irreverent Historical Retellings

Mary Queen of Scots

I would have liked nothing better than to have lived with my parents in a fishing village, or at least by the sea.  But ideally, dad would have been a fisherman, and mom and I would have baked bread and knitted sweaters by the hour in our quiet little house.  I would have gone out to feed the chickens and the horses and the ox.  We would have had a pet rabbit who slept at the foot of my bed and made little rabbits that danced around the yard and that mom tapped with the broom when they got underfoot as she swept the rubble away, and we would have loved out homes and not wanted to leave Scotland ever.  It would have been our solace and people would have been free from tyranny, hunger, and Queen Elizabeth.

What did I do in my cell for 18 years before she found a way to execute me safely?  I dreamed of another life.  A fishing village.  The sheep herder who would come with his son to visit.  He would trade lamb for fish and my father would gut them with care.  The boy would follow me out as I went to look at the sea and he would stare at me instead of the blue and he would say my eyes were like water and my hair like lamb's wool and my hands small treasures he wished only to hold.

I picked out names for our children.  One I would name Maria and she would be a poet with long red hair over her shoulder and against such pure fair skin.  I lost my father when I was 6 days old.  Our children would not lose Joseph, my sheepherding faithful hearted truth loving husband.  Any my parents would grow old and come stay with us, and it would be a house full of love.

The day of my execution I stopped dreaming and said:  Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil for thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory forever, Amen.  In the name of your son, Christ, who died for our sins and who I hope redeems me, too, because I can't stomach spending eternity with Queen Elizabeth.  I can't forgive her for my unborn Maria, a poet I think.  Yes.  Maria will find the words to make it all right.  God, is that you?  My soul feels lighter.  God?  Holy Ghost?  I'm being embraced I think by an angel.  Thank you.

I kneel before the chopping block and rest my head on the stone.  It is cold.

Jane Seymour (Henry VIII’s wife, not the actress)

I am a river flowing out to the sea.  My new son flowed out of me into the waters of the earth and I, too, flow around the world, guided by currents.  By the moon.  Into a netherworld where I watch and wait. I feel its pull.  I don’t tell them.  They already know.  I see the looks on their faces.  My ladies in waiting