fbpx

Tag: Ruth Foley

, | By Ruth Foley

[ Issue Issue #2 ]

Dear James Whale

I must have peace and this is the only way –suicide note   A question of creation: your discovery             was ours and ours to despise. Its cries were ours, its fear             of burning. You understood   how ugly we think we are. If …

| By Ruth Foley

[ Issue Issue #2 ]

Dear Ingénue

Be plucky, foolish, drawn to underwater caverns and other damp lairs. Cry attractively, one hand against your mouth. Wear something diaphanous,   and you will probably survive the night, although your lover’s best friend will almost certainly die. Pace, sigh, practice your scream. Raise the alarm   when he floats to the surface or lies …

| By Ruth Foley

[ Issue Issue #2 ]

Dear Colin Clive

The remedy: anesthesia at the back of the throat, numbness spreading up and out, down and in as your grip on the stem of the glass grows loose like your consonants. The difficulty:   to keep a human heart beating, the seeming-simplicity of lifting a creature toward the flashing sky with the turn of a …

| By Ruth Foley

[ Issue Issue #2 ]

Dear Lon Chaney

I, too, grew up among the deaf. I learned to use my hands for understanding, to change my face to exaggerate emotions.   Sometimes I used glue or wires. Sometimes I used putty. I moved from silence into speech. I changed my name   to something shorter. I pretended to curse my house, pretended to …

| By Ruth Foley

[ Issue Issue #2 ]

Dear Lon Chaney, Jr.

Maybe I’m the only one who sees the pelt across your bare face. I know a quiet man like you, a man who’s quick with a laugh and a fist, the first to break a vase across his rival’s head. You lean and smile and hold yourself in amiable check. I see your hands around …