What’s Gone Bad At Aunt Margarete’s - Joanna Theiss

Chicken noodle soup in a lidless box,

The last three inches of a Braunschweiger from the German market,

Fifty-two ounces of orange juice, pulp hardened to granite, fluid turned liver gray,

A slice of chocolate cake from two birthdays ago,

Smoked herring, congealed to the texture of tapioca pudding,

Cat food in a kidney-shaped aluminum can, top curled open, which Margarete once gave

to the stray calico that came begging at her back door,

The big-buttoned cell phone that Margarete hid in the deli drawer underneath a

package of slippery ham,

Margarete’s balance, rendering her brick stoop a cliff, leaving her knees swollen and

razoring cuts on her palms so lurid that her neighbor called an ambulance,

ignoring Margarete when she blamed her medication for bleeding her like a stuck

pig,

Margarete’s bladder,

Margarete’s bite,

Margarete, whose spoilage defied her nature, who isn’t farting out like a rancid

gallon of whole milk or exploding like a powerful, overripe peach, but who is

shriveling, a fallen crabapple decaying quietly in a corner, as unexpected as

when I open a fresh jar of honey

and find mold tangling its depths.

END

Originally published by Angel Rust Magazine 2021

Joanna Theiss is a writer living in Washington, DC. Her stories have appeared in Chautauqua, Peatsmoke Journal and Milk Candy Review, among others, and she is an associate editor at Five South. In a past life, Joanna worked as a lawyer, practicing criminal defense and international trade law. You can find book reviews, links to her published works, and her mosaic collages at www.joannatheiss.com. Twitter @joannavtheiss Instagram @joannatheisswrites