Melissa McEver Huckabay
I made her out of confetti and spackle,
sawdust, plaster of Paris, blood.
Added magazine strips with cut-out words: Willowy. Bright. Christ-like.
Glued them down. White blobs on the table.
Cut off Barbie heads to make a crown. Their painted
eyes blue like gas stoves.
Put her in a store window in my small town. Found her
a boyfriend.
Never gave her
a wide-enough mouth.
Melissa McEver Huckabay’s writing has appeared in SWWIM, Poetry South, Thimble, Defunkt, and elsewhere, and her short fiction has won the Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Prize from Spider Road Press. She has an MFA in poetry from Texas State University and teaches at the University of Houston-Downtown.
You can find Melissa on Bluesky @melpsoul
Artwork: “Pacific Waterleaf” by Talitha May
Photography