Open in Fifteen by Derek JG Williams
“My arms are full of so many arms and legs”
Fiction by Derek JG Williams
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Two tourists watch me peel a skirt from sexless hips. Through the glass storefront I see them sip coffee from recyclable cups. With steam pouring from their mouths and nostrils, well-dressed dragons in business-casual watch me like cats watch birds. And no, I’m not polite when undressing mannequins; manners are for the moneyed, and I’ve got work to do.
Removing flesh-tone arms and legs, the pile swells grotesquely. As if the bodies trapped in a cave of limbs were fighting, desperate for saving. I don’t bother to unzip before removing their skirts. I shuck them off like they’re alive and I’m alive and it’s been weeks since I’ve been laid. Because we open in fifteen minutes, courtesy is for those with time to spare. I’ve got work to do.
I’m twenty-three years old. I do this every day, waltz with bodies who’ve never known a lover’s breath on their back. Or held their mother’s hand as she lay in a hospital bed with doctors circling over her like gulls.
The tourists have gone. The sidewalk is empty. My arms are full of so many arms and legs. But I carry the headless torsos individually, my arms around each belly, my neck against each cheek, and I am sick for them. They will never know this feeling.
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A student of America’s shorthand history, Derek JG Williams grew up studying comic books and the backs of baseball cards. He puts words into rows both long and short. His writing has been featured at venues throughout the country and published both in print and on the web. An MFA candidate at UMass Boston, he was a finalist for Organic Weapon Arts inaugural David Blair Memorial Chapbook Prize. Derek has a poem appearing in Best New Poets 2013, and other work published or forthcoming in H_NGM_N, Main Street Rag, LUMINA, The Quotable, RHINO, Bellingham Review, Knockout, and Palooka Literary Journal, among others.
He’s a proponent of handclaps in songs and needs no excuse to celebrate all the time, anytime.