Red Clocks

by Leni Zumas

Thousands of years in the making, fine-tuned by women in the dark creases of history, helping each other.

Christmas, her favorite criminal. Stockings are hanged, trees chopped, geese shot, children threatened with coal.

The wife made persons. No need to otherwise justify what she is doing on the planet.

“My phone can’t look things up; it’s too old. ‘Cunt’ is just another word for vagina.”

Another wet little slap—Bex is hit too. “Cunt!” says the girl. “Goddammit, John,” says Didier, “if you can’t sit at the table without throwing food, you’re not going to sit at the table.” Susan stares at her husband. “Why does she know that word?” “How should I know?” Bex sings, “Cunty McGee was a happy little cunt.” “Goodness,” says Edward.

What joy to walk naked after a shower and hear your labia clap. To rise from the toilet and hear your labia clap.

The girl descends the steps, blue scarf rippling behind; and the biographer sees blue-swaddled babies shot from cannons across the Canadian border, then tossed back, still wrapped and cooing, onto American soil.

They could both get arrested. The biographer could become a headline. SHIFTY SCHOOLMARM IS ABORTER’S ACCOMPLICE.