Nora Luongo
ALICE, BACK FROM WONDERLAND
Eat This
The pill is a small pill. It must be taken at the same time, same place, never change the location. Consistency is key. Start at the beginning and don’t skip any. Don’t be late. Never be late. Don’t be early. Pop it in your mouth. It’s not candy. It won’t taste like candy. It will taste like the emptiness you are trying to create. Make room. You have to clean house before you can invite anyone else to join you.
There should be no side effects, but if there are, which there shouldn’t be, they might include a feeling of increasing loneliness in ever widening circles. If you’re lucky, the loneliness will detach itself from you and make a home in your bedroom, where it will visit with you every night.
Mix This
Congratulations! You’ve successfully graduated to the next level. This potion comes in two parts as they do not play well for long periods of time together. Please keep the parts separate until ready to use, and then use immediately before they begin bickering.
Part A must be refrigerated, keep it as cold as the layer of ice around your heart. If it thaws, it may spontaneously erupt and become useless. Also, embarrassing. Nobody wants to see that mess. DO NOT refrigerate Part B. It does best at room temperature. Except for the rooms that get too humid. Please keep Part B dry and away from tears.
Mix EXACTLY the amounts of Parts A & B together as specified. Place the vial of Part A in your left hand and the pack of Part B in your right. Do not mix up your hands. Make sure Part B is sitting directly on top of Part A. You’ll know it’s in the right spot when it looks like the weight sitting on top of your chest every morning when you wake up. Now stab it with your syringe plunger. If anything falls out throw it away and start over. BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO TOUCH THE
SYRINGE. Turn everything clockwise. Swirl. Do an incantation, but don’t turn yourself to stone.
Inject This
This is the advanced session. Too bad you’re not ready. It doesn’t matter. Keep your hands steady. Remember your lessons. When you stabbed the doughy plastic? It’s exactly like that, except on your stomach. About two inches above the spot where you feel that constant throbbing. No, not there. Position it just so, and plunge it in slowly. Not that slowly. Don’t look away! What’s wrong with you? Pull out quickly. Not so fast! Apply pressure. There, not so bad, right? Feel the lightness of the false hope filling you up? Or is that a balloon of anxiety? Or is there even a difference? It’s okay, you’ve got a couple more days to figure that out before the test.
Discard This
Wait! Did you forget something? This isn’t going to materialize. Stop. Please remove all evidence of failure in the biohazard container supplied to you. The unused boxes in your fridge, too. They’re not food. And the ones in the back of your closet, waiting for nothing. Where do you think you are, after all? Wonderland? Impossible things don’t happen here.
SYNTH AND BASS
Tell me your darkest dream.
Desire. The one you’re afraid of.
To make real. To never live.
Paint it in blues and violet, black
bass and synth. I’ll be the bass, unnoticed
until it goes missing. In the silence
you realize the low, rolling thunder
was the soul. Play me
alone. In the dark if you must.
Mix in the synth, deep sweeping
waves of sound pressing against inkblot walls.
I know the secrets you won’t tell
yourself. Listen: that shade of blue
won’t last forever. What do you want
in gemstones? Glittering blue lapis,
changeling opal? We can hunt
unassuming grey geodes – discover
atomic purple amethysts, dazzling
inside their midnight caves,
sparkling sharply - only if we break
them open.
Nora Luongo received her MFA from Rutgers University-Newark. Her poetry has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Used Furniture Review, and others, in the Overplay/Underdone anthology from Medusa's Laugh Press, in No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-generation American Poetry, and as part of the award-winning Glassbook Project. She was born and raised and still lives in New Jersey.
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