Christine Fadden

Humorless Bastard

Nothing’s funny about Mummy with her tits half out.

She’ll turn my smooth cool cheek to suckle and suckle again and again and 

she’ll mouth there there, Bozo, there there,

but nothing soothes me less than mime, 

and Mummy’s animated.

My lullaby is a drum roll please and the sound of feral Appaloosas running tight

circles balancing 

ballerinas on their backs. 

I don’t fidget much, but I’m fussy. 

My harlequin collar catches milk Mummy makes by slapping my porcelain 

white palms against her inverted purple nipples. 

It’s sad, I know, to suffocate in folds of sour.

I stare off; Mummy stares harder, baring 

just a few of her teeth. 

There are three men here whose sole task is to tame her.

When she coos, “You suck just like the Guess Your Weight Man,” 

my overly arched eyebrow twitches and I reach to clutch the beads 

of her necklace— 

twist them into a choker until her tongue sticks out. 

Now that’s what I call funny.

Christine Fadden roams around. Her fiction appears or is forthcoming in Bluestem, New South, decomP, Staccato Fiction, Storyglossia, On Earth as it is, and elsewhere. Christine's piece was inspired by a contest at Moon Milk Review.