ISSUE 6 · SPRING 2011
Copyright © 2011 Callista Buchen
| Becoming CALLISTA BUCHEN
I live in the forest of lessons, a red fox on the run, ember-streaked, a single single flash of color. Nearby, bachelor bears share a castle, circled by oaks, the holler of blue jays, this tired vixen. Smoke tunnels hot from the chimney. I will make a good pet, paws in someone’s ample lap. Why leave a forbidden door unlocked? Chairs rock, I wait on a cushion, ears pert, tongue lax, but the boys traipse home to kill, to punish the uninvited. Yet I am not a fox hanged nor drowned, only flung from a window: stunned, trotting away, away. Rest in the open, snout shrouded in a white-tipped tail. I am Escapefoot. “Vixen” too dangerous a word on an author’s pen, one violent flourish and a ghost slinks from the forest as an old woman materializes in a clearing. How strange must be the tales that stay the same in truth and translation. I fall through a second story: I am Silverhead, picking chanterelles among pines, fatigue in shoulders, skirts, dragging maple leaves in circles like mystic chants. I am motherless in a witch-nose mask, braced into moss with knotty knuckles and a loose scarf, once the color of foxes. I am ancient-born.
A cottage glints in the distance, almost made from plums and smoke, home to a new bear family. Hello? I am calling. I bring you mushrooms! The door, oak carved with jays, bangs open at touch. I lean inside, my mud on the fine fur rug with ghosts and moss. She is a good bear-woman, I know, the clean stove, the beds all made up. He is a good bear-man. See all the chairs? The cushions? And their bear-child. Such tidy toys. I will be a welcome auntie, but the bowl empties, the chair breaks, the floor hardens. My hair, too familiar and other-worldly, betrays: trespasser. Angry bears hurl me, she of fox, vixen, woman, witch, from a higher window. I tumble harder, lost in a maze of letters, impaled by pens at my body for story, flinging shavings into a refuse pile behind someone’s old breasts and silver curls. Bring the blonde wig! The ruffled bloomers! That’s it, cupcake! Go on, Goldie, you baby fox, try that house! Here I am, precious, from a pseudo-womb, a tiny never-was. |
Callista Buchen is a teacher and graduate student. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Gigantic, Bellevue Review, and many others. Her reviews have been published in The Collagist and Mid-American Review. She is the incoming editor-in-chief of Portal del Sol and a staff reader for jmww. Callista can be found at callistabuchen.wordpress.com.