“Acting is like a Halloween mask you put on.” –River Phoenix
Author: Katie Jean Shinkle
Katie Jean Shinkle is the author of four novellas and six chapbooks, most recently “None of This is an Invitation” (with Jessica Alexander, Astrophil Press, forthcoming) and “Will You Kiss Me Goodnight?” (The Offending Adam, 2021). Recent work has been featured in Fugue, Sou'wester, Always Crashing, NELLE, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a 2021 Lambda poetry fellow, co-poetry editor of DIAGRAM, and teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing program at Sam Houston State University.
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Dina & Darlene Tunnel Have an Intuition, See an Apparition
Dina & Darlene are dozing on and off.
Dina says, “I was writing the eulogy for River Phoenix’s funeral in my head.”
“Weird,” Darlene says. “Go back to sleep.”
And then, River Phoenix appears.
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LATE NIGHT
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Dina & Darlene Tunnel—variations on how to be born conjoined
Fission and fusion. Ischiopagus: lower half/spine-ends melded together at a 180 degree angle, share genitals, anus. Dina & Darlene, thoraco-omphalopagus: one liver, one heart. Dina & Darlene, single face with four ears, eight limbs. Cephalopagus: two faces, one head. Janiceps: thorax and skull, equal faces in opposite direction. Dina & Darlene, craniopagus parasiticus: a parasitic head with an un/derdeveloped body attached at the head to a second perfectly healthy baby. Dina & Darlene, xiphoid cartilage, share only liver. Dina & Darlene, merged bones, breastplate to waist, ovaries to lungs. Dina & Darlene, together forever.