Moon Cola - Issue 5 - What Would Barbie Do?

Trophies

tropical parabolas make the jump to the other side of the graph we might not understand infinity but we can hold the concept of the concept telepathically informatically automatically junk piles out of sight still fill space staring at screens isn’t my kink though i like other kinds of sweet masochism sweet like mostly gentle

jumping ship orgasms

petering out sweet again sweet sweet sweet again again there are other words like honey too

reaching the other side is sweeter when the other side reaches for you i like it when you look up my skirt when i’ve asked you to when you know i like it and then you do it for me to like it and you like it, too

Vs and Us point in directions after having touched or, while touching in one point i never remember if the ohio splits into

4 - Natalie De Paz

the allegheny and the monongahela or if the two converge to make the ohio (converge)

trophies braid my eyes in my dreams back and forth, almost looping, roping, glinting with jealous lust

moonshine paperclips jolting me awake yet asleep and unable to move picturing myself lying there i am uma thurman though usually it’s not the toe but the breath like coming into meditation sitting still after running through a nightmare being chased the sensation of falling what’s worse is it the burden of great minds to warn us octavia butler and system of a down they spelled it out they’re trying to build a prison well they did it but at least i can still cum pretty much whenever i want

“headless in time” by Ami J. Sanghvi-7

We’re sleeping over in someone else’s house for the first time. We trade the familiar fabric of our bedsheets for metal-backed cots, slippery camping bags borrowed from the garage and hit with a broom to beat the dust, layers of blankets, a carpeted piece of floor by Julie’s bed. We’re grownup girls now. In her room, we silently envy everything she has—the full-size Tiger Beat posters, still bearing the folds and perforated edges; her new flip phone, her CD collection of our favorite bands, a line of Bath & Body sprays organized by color and scent name. In front of her vanity lit up by bulbs, we stare in the mirror and notice only the things we hate about ourselves—too pimply, too oily, too tall, too short, too dark, too blonde, who would ever want us, we will never be enough for anyone to love. We want so much we could shatter the mirror with a fist and not even flinch at the blood. Instead, we smear our lips with sticky strawberry gloss until it burns with fake flavor and grabs at our hair and makes us hunger for a first kiss. We imagine leaving their skin to glisten as much as our own. We powder our faces with our favorite shades and wonder when our crush will want us back and whisper their name to our reflection like a game of Bloody Mary. This would look so good on you, Julie says, not listening, holding up one of her scoop-necked tops from her closet against our chest. She offers to comb our hair with her brush, old locks still stuck in the teeth, and braid it into a fishtail. We try not to think about our mothers. During a game of Truth or Dare, we prank call a randomly dialed number, confess a secret, steal Julie’s brother’s clothes until he comes in, towering and wet-haired and red-faced, and scream each time. This is the most alive we’ve ever been. We try to forget about the dolls hidden and gathering bunnies under our own beds, the American Girls, the Barbies, the Polly Pockets, their rubbery plastic jelly skirts with bits of rug and hair, and blouses we could rip away with a soft tug at the velcro. How we could make them strip and make love to each other before we even knew what sex or sapphic meant. At dinnertime, Julie’s mom orders

8-Sofia Aguilar

a pizza and several hip-necked bottles of Coke, and returns with a sealed popcorn bag and a movie from the video rental store. We jostle for room and somehow find ourselves next to Julie on the couch, the coveted spot, and meet her smooth, creamy skin with the bumps goose-pimpling on our own. Every time a joke is made, she leans over to giggle into my ear or lust after the love interest or smooth our baby hairs down, using her saliva as a girl-made gel. When popcorn salt sticks to our lipgloss leftovers, she rubs it away carefully with a finger. When we turn our mouths red and blue from Fun Dip and Bottle Pop, she laughs and teases touching tongues. Everything is prickling. Everything smells like fruit, mist sprays of perfume, a flavor of toothpaste we don’t recognize because we forgot ours at home and she lent us her tube. In the bathroom, we take a chapstick from a drawer and pocket it without her knowing. Later, sandwiched between goose down, we dream of hands. We pray the morning never comes and that our mothers forget to pick us up. We wish for a girlhood we never got. We whisper Julie’s name into the darkness and repeat it and repeat it and hope this time she hears it.

Date Night

Ken’s not home, his tooth marked legs detached, duck tape worn thin, shining prosthetic underwear –that superglue pocked source of epoxy, washed away in summer’s rain.

Instead, Barbie meets Frankie. I dress them slowly, tiny palms selecting the pinkpurplepinks of their adornments. High heels and handbags in place, it’s dinnertime.

They sit chastely, as friends across the diner booth. My hands over theirs, moving conversations from my lips to their mouths. Of boys. Of work. Of children. The adulthood I’m sure will become me.

The evening ends, without a Ken in sight. I slip their hands together, my small fingers meeting over theirs. I’m sure no one else has done this. Ever. I’m sure I will never do this. Ever.

Our desires find home in the Dreamhouse.

Thyroidectomies & Butterfly Clips

Barbie is a hive mind. Behind every jewel-toned dome of unblinking eyes, Lies the knowledge of a pop star, a pet groomer, a rock climber, a chef, a senator, a mathematician, a pilates instructor. So as our Hospital Patient Barbie lies in the crisp white bed, cloaked with the chic silhouette of crumpled pale blue smock the colour of chewed gum; adorned with translucent IV tubes; preparing for her total thyroidectomy, she is aware of it all— from the standpoint of the doctors hovering studiously above; the anesthesiologist coddling her fragile feelings; the shivering patient herself; the architect of the very walls around them.

The thyroid is shaped like a butterfly and hers is ruined, retired, folded in fatigue. As the trickle in her vein makes her feel funny, she thinks, wonders, worries— almost frets if fretting can be done lying so still— [like down powerline; like stunned pigeon in cardboard box; like static hidden in twisted wool] of where the ghost of her dead butterfly will float off to.

Will it be reincarnated as a sparkle-crusted

12-Izzy Amber Wyskiel

hair clip, smaller than a pea, nestled in the clear mold of 1999 Mall Barbie’s accessory set? Or will it come back as a Swallowtail, photographed by her hive-sister; Rainforest Explorer Barbie?

{Click}

Perhaps, instead, in a drawing on Soccer Mommy Barbie’s fridge? {Dashed pink lines}

Perhaps, instead, a lopsided sculpture in Artsy Barbie’s studio? {Locked up for the night}

Perhaps, instead, a pleasant vision for Transcendental Meditation Barbie? {A sign?}

As salty, involuntary tears run from her eyes to her frozen mouth, she feels all possibilities.

KISSING GIRLS

gummy bear kisses and melty lipgloss smiles spring feels different when it’s blooming from your eyes a little more like something new / something unseen something unknown / something pulled from a dream

cupcakes for the bake sale lie forgotten on the counter braided bracelets tie our wrists, battered copy of stargirl by jerry spinelli sprawled dog-eared on your bedroom floor i wish i could read your eyes the way i read your lips / more

like instinct in the way that we communicate by touch morse code tapped against the dip of your hip, lush bath bombs crumbled beneath your sparkled fingerprints

but if i did, i’d love you deeper and sweeter than the honey decadently drizzled into your midnight cups of tea and if i knew the words for what we were, i’d paint sunsets on the glossy dark skin of your cheekbones / i could never regret us, pinked with innocence and yet so full of yearning for intertwined arms and heads pillowed upon thighs / learning in time to keep our kisses secret, behind closed doors i want to unlearn with you / let me be yours

14-Sol Kim Cowell

if i told you my ex was 21st century peggy olson’s incarnate, it’d take weeks of explanation for you to really understand, so i need you to just believe me. oh, me? i’m sally draper all grown up. very little if any connection between the two things. the thing is, when don draper bends over the sink in nothing but a short pink towel, i too want to distract him in the hopes of him not cutting himself. i too bring up bad memories in my daddy. what i mean is, when don tells peggy it will shock you how much it never happened, i know just what he means, and i know it’s both true and untrue. you never forget a thing, hence the so-often flashbacks. my flashbacks don’t bother me much anymore but at night they still eat me alive. i think it’s because the drugs wear off sometime after i pass out, and then i wake in the dark shaking and sick and wonder who it is i am. to be clear, i am not don draper. only, like dick, i wish i was. when don tossed his daughter’s valentines card on his desk and peggy started calling him daddy, i’m not afraid to admit, i took it the wrong way. had way the wrong response. i could blame the ocd’s unfortunate tendencies, but i won’t, it wouldn’t be the truth. the truth is i’m also betty, i have mommy issues from here to the moon, i’m constantly paranoid my partner’s cheating on me but unlike betty i don’t have a television show to show me if i’m right or not. what i mean is, my hands shake when handsome young men flirt with me, though i’ve never had to tell anyone not to kiss me— they’ve never tried. oh, they’ve tried other things with a don’t tell me what to do falling quick from their lips, but that’s a whole other story and i’m still in the middle of this one. i mean my neuroses are also stoked at the flame of therapy, though i’ve never laid down for my therapist, i have a few i could claim looked down my dress.

semi self-portrait in the world of mad men

i mean i don’t wear dresses but i do show off in the hopes of something to complain about. i mean my partner doesn’t exactly look like don draper but he has that easy-uneasy confidence and a whole inner world i’ll never know. when i say i’m sally i mean i want nothing more than to go along for the ride, lift the dregs from each forgotten glass, fall asleep on the couch and have my small body lifted up into safety, my daddy’s strong arms.

Melted Neapolitan Ice Cream

First, the days $2 blueberry muffins from the corner store were the size of my head and the only point of contention between me and my little sister

the days peanut butter banana sandwiches were my religion and orange slices were the only things passed around at soccer practices

the days we sat in the backyard as a family, painting the wood planks of our play structure the colours of Neapolitan ice cream thinking they could never melt

Then,

the days my ex-boyfriend used white boxing gloves to teach me to fight and I let him pin my 100-pound body to the wall he called it “training”

the days I flew several thousand kilometres away to dance with heartwarming people and never wanted to come back to my cold, small town

Now,

my days are spent noticing the apple seed nostrils of an old man who can’t seem to keep his mouth covered up my days are spent staring into the back right corner of my room the one in which my plant is dying

And so there was light. I’m not religious except in the moments when Barbie had a bad hair day but it was a good day anyway. I don’t believe in sermons but Barbie said that every girl has princess potential and years later I’ve been walking with books on my head. Not a lot of the glory stays but pink outfits are tubular still and y2k is making a comeback because the world is ending again and apparently we deal with the end of the world by wearing low rise jeans and cringey baby tank tops. Lord we were on the ground when we begged to be forgiven but then Barbie came up and gave us the doctor-astronaut-ceo-president pipeline and said everything is possible but what she meant was that anything is possible which meant that while i wanted to believe that nothing was possible, barbie held my hand in her face and told me i don’t have that kind of privilege anymore. What i didn’t know was that my mother used to buy me barbies from a specific store. she bought me so many barbies that the man would give us free barbie suitcases with barbie passports so i could travel to every career she wanted me to have. What i mean is that every girl i know that is barely a girl still believes in a barbie and that every barely atheist girl i know still carries the barbie bible and talks about loving your neighbour unless they are a fashion criminal and barbie’s creator named her barbara after her daughter so her daughter could be grown up without being and my mom wanted to rebel so she named me something that was diametrically the opposite of what she wanted me to be. She wanted me to be soft and not get eaten and so she named me a warrior but she never wanted me to fight, she wanted me to be more than the leash of a sword and how far it can let you go so she named me a warrior and then hid all the swords and she bought me all the barbies that were doctors but also all that were the president and said. Look. you can be whatever you want but more importantly you don’t have to be me. Barbie said let there be light and so there was light but it was a pink light which sounds unnecessary but is an important detail anyway because i’m not religious until barbie. Then i’ll be a hot pink mini skirt preacher at your door asking you to come to barbie church in hot flamingo pink.

Peehu

and then barbie said “let there be light”

22-“Feed Me, Bby “ by Milly Aburrow

When the Height of Beauty was a Cherry Ring Pop

Mum said they were too expensive. Would rot my teeth. I don’t remember when I’d first encountered those artificial treasures, but getting my hands on a ring pop had become my life’s goal. Daily, I’d begged for one, knowing the answer before I opened my lips. But, one day, Dad got me from school, and before I even considered where Mum was, I asked for a Ring Pop and he said yes. I pretended to spend a long time choosing. Dallying, looking over my shoulder for witnesses. Outside, I stood still, hushed and awed, carefully opening the shiny foil seam, easing it apart, not tearing it. I smoothed the wrapper flat and placed it inside a Dr Seuss from my bookbag. For the rest of our walk, I stared at my plastic-pinched index finger, the weight of solid sugar anchoring my joy. Dad was talking, but I wasn’t listening; instead I held my hand so that the ring caught the light. Sunrays bounced off those facets, air bubbles glittering like trapped cola fizz. Phrases wafted into my consciousness: ‘needs a rest’ and ‘too-big feelings’. I was anguishing over the delicious predicament of whether to lick my ring or keep it pristine, whether I might get away with wearing it to school.

Now, I can’t remember when I ate it, or if I simply admired it for weeks before it was inevitably binned. I know, though, that I kept the packet. It made its way into my diary at some point, though I didn’t start that until I was older, when it was suggested it might be helpful to write down my feelings. I have it still, encased between VHS tapes, with photo albums, yellowing birthday cards, and the too-sweet tang of half a memory.

Barbie hears an ahem. She drops her house key between the floorboards of the rickety porch, spins around, and sees a hen.

The bird asks, “Whatcha doing out so late?”

Barbie has always bristled at parenting—not that there’s been much. She’s sixteen.

The age of the chicken is unknown, but it looks old: balding head, droopy wings, gnarled twig legs.

The girl resists swearing at the hen. “Worked ‘til 11 if it’s any of your biz. Which it ain’t. You’re not my mother.” And, since she figured two could play this game, “What are you doing out of the coop?”

“Locked out. Your father forgot me,” replies the bird.

“Me, too.”

The chicken looks at the shabby little house. There’s an unearthly blue glow through the gap-toothed blinds. “He’s still up.”

Barbie ignores that. She shines her phone light beneath the porch, hoping for the glint of the key. Nothing. She sits, lights a smoke. The chicken flaps her wings.

“Sorry,” the girl says and exhales over her shoulder. “I’ll take one, if ya got.”

That surprises the teen.

“Bad for ya.” The hen blows perfect smoke rings. “But for me, who cares? Your father’s chopping my head off in the morning.”

Barbie’s glad the bird can’t see the shock on her face. Or can she? How well do chickens see at night?

The hen doesn’t pull punches. “So whatcha going to make with me?”

Barbie chokes and sputters. She doesn’t have any chicken recipes, doesn’t cook, doesn’t eat, doesn’t touch chicken she lies fiddling with her Kenny Roger’s Roasters uniform.

“How do you know he’s gonna...”

The bird takes a long drag. “Chickens are seers.”

There’s rustling in the tall weeds around the house. The girl and the hen catch a flash of eyes, hear a not-too-distant howl.

The hen butts out her cig and says, “All over now.”

The bird says, “Don’t care about beasts no more.”

Barbie does, shivers. She wants the chicken to care, too. “You’re just giving up?”

The hen shrugs. That causes the girl to think hard about who’ll miss the bird—not easy when Barbie can’t think of anyone who’d miss her.

“Oh!” Something occurs to her, She points her cig for emphasis. Ash falls like an omen. “What about the rooster? He’ll be sad.”

The hen coughs smoke. “Him? Fuck.”

The teen has been watching her language—all her mother ever taught her—but there’s no point if the chicken is going to be foul-mouthed.

“That doofus struts. He mansplains. He cuts me with his spurs, rips out what feathers I’ve got left. Won’t do nothin’ tomorrow.”

Barbie is silent.

The bird French inhales. “How’s your male?”

Still silent.

“I don’t have one,” Barbie mumbles, hoping chickens don’t hear well. They do. “Girl, you not spurred yet?”

Barbie is pissed. This isn’t about her. “Christ, stop changing the subject. You’re about to be slaughtered!”

The chicken scratches in the dirt. “Truth is I’m out of eggs. A hen only has so many.” Pecks at nothing. “It is what it is, eh?”

Because it’s dark and late and, what the hell, the hen brought it up, the girl pops questions.”Chicken, do I only have so many? You know, eggs.” The teen stops, looks around, whispers, “When am I gonna run out?”

The bird’s fag burns bright. “Dunno how you work. Ask your mother.” This is a smart creature. Surely, Barbie thinks, she’s noticed there’s only Pa on this miserable farm and she’s heard him when he’s collecting eggs or throwing scratch, “This is woman’s work, but don’t have no woman no more. Just a stupid, lazy daughter.” Barbie can hear him in her bedroom even with the window closed and Kenny Chesney belting out “How Forever Feels.”

The hen stares at the sad face. Turns out chickens can see at night. “Got a sister or a girlfriend?”

“Wish I did.”

The chicken cackles and crows how great they are. How she and the other hens prank the cock, tell him they’re The Four Horsemen and make him guess which is Death, Destruction, Pestilence, and Famine. How they share hard black beetles caught in the barnyard and babysit each other’s chicks so often it doesn’t matter whose is whose. The chicken butts out her cig. “All over now.”

Barbie wishes she had gal pals, wishes she had gone to the coop, and

hung out and had picked out which horseman she was. “I’ll let you into your house.”

The bird contemplates. “Nah. It’s a beautiful night. My last one. Ya go to bed.”

Crap! The girl remembers the door key is under the porch. She crawls in. The hen follows. They giggle and cluck, pick spider webs from each other’s hair and feathers. They squeal at a rat. The chicken finds the key amidst beer cans and white bones. Barbie: “Thanks.”

“No boo-hoo,” says the hen, because the girl’s eyes are wet. Barbie hadn’t cried the first time the world ended—when her father had raged, the screen door slammed in the night, and her mother disappeared—but this? Stranger. Harder.

Estée Lauder Pure Color Envy Sculpting Lipstick in Rebellious Rose

I won’t tell anyone that I cradle the dead animal on the path out of the childhood fear of getting in trouble. I dig him a grave with my yogurt spoon, bury him and the spoon together. On the River Styx, he can use it as a paddle. But first I watch his belly for any tremble,

like the dead actress on screen who quivers to breathe, wearing the same shade of lipstick that my mother would leave as a print on my cheek each first day of school. —I hold my breath for her.

When I do, I hear biblical angels bound outside with wheels and wings and so many eyes. But it’s the rain in the window and what I’m hearing are tires through puddles, —nothing from the sky.

And I won’t tell anyone about the rose-pink mark I leave in the shape of my mouth forever on the animal, brave now, with his lipstick kiss, ready for something bright and big.