Overheard: “I crawled my way out of the dirt, and by God, I will crawl my way back into the dirt.”

“I never asked to be born,” was my older sister’s favorite response to our mother’s nagging. We were finishing our roadkill chicken dinner when mom brought up college again. Antoinette, my sister, stormed out to piss the evening away at the barrelhouse, as always. Her best friends, Antonia and Antigone, worked at the local venom factory, so that’s where she planned to go after high school—end of story. Sobbing, mom grabbed the dirty dishes with her mandibles and smashed them against the wall. As always, I helped clean up the mess in silence. Nobody knew I was leaving this hole tomorrow for Hollywood. Maybe forever this time.

Sharon Suzuki-Martinez’s first book of poetry, The Way of All Flux, won the New Rivers Press MVP Poetry Prize in 2010. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, South Dakota Review, Duende, Dusie, Clockhouse, and elsewhere. She created The Poet’s Playlist, a music/poetry blog, but now mostly photographs and writes about little-known animals at sharonsuzukimartinez.tumblr.com/