Inconsistencies 

Let me writhe on pavement ripped
by sun. Rumor has it that that’s how
my mother was born. 

Rumor has it that that’s how I was born, too. 

I picture my birth the way I picture the bible, 
happening between two gentle and soft fingertips. Reverent whispers,
because, not to brag, but I was the first child. The first child,
the hardest child. 

I like to think that it stormed that night. 
That the rumors are wrong.
That I wasn’t born in the sun. 
That the night of my birth, the electricity went out,
and my parents were left without light. 

I like to think that they wept when I was born. 
That they wept again when they could finally turn on a lamp, 
and watch its sparks burst the way I did from the womb. 


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Loisa Fenichell has been fabricating tales for as long as she can remember, whether with words or with Playmobil. She has, in the past, attended three writing workshops: one at Sarah Lawrence, one at Wesleyan University, called Center for Creative Youth, and one at UMass Amherst, called Juniper Institute for Young Writers. Her prose poem, "once i was younger," has been published in an issue of The Ash Tree Journal. She is currently on leave from Oberlin College and is, in the meantime, attending SUNY Purchase, where she hopes to major in creative writing.