Beth Kanter
Pinned to My Heart
A young woman wearing my deceased grandmother’s favorite housecoat filled in for my acupuncturist today. She ushered me into a pale yellow treatment room, lit a Pine-Sol scented candle, and cleaned my skin with individually wrapped alcohol wipes she kept in her bra strap. Instead of needles, she treated me with nanna’s old clothespins, fishing them out three and four at a time from the coat’s daisy-dotted pockets. I wept, as I sometimes do on this table. I am sorry, bubbala. So sorry. She dried my eyes with a balled-up tissue, kissed my forehead, and embroidered wings atop wounds.
Doomsdays
It’s the end of the world and I know it. Not because the broken AM/FM clock radio packed away with my old Behavioral Psych textbooks started blaring REM at the stroke of midnight but because my Great Aunt Sylvia, who thinks her black-and-white television set is a Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, texted me to say so. She heard the news firsthand from her two most reliable neighbors, Mrs. Halpern from 7A and Mr. Gewirtz from 13B, both of whom she ran into this morning in the mailroom of her pre-war, rent-controlled Jackson Heights apartment building. Because I’m Sylvie’s favorite niece, as well as her only surviving relative, she wanted to let me know immediately about humanity’s demise. P.S. Make sure you have on clean underwear. P. P. S: Pack a snack. P.P.P.S. Clean socks never hurt. Since I would never disrespect my dear aunt, I throw in a load of laundry and cut a Honeycrisp apple into eight even pieces. At the start of the spin cycle, I turn on the local news. It’s true. A woman in a blueberry blazer confirms what Great Aunt Sylvia and her loyal neighbors already know. We again have reached the end. I bite into the whole apple sitting on the counter next to the cut up one. Somehow I am close to fine.
Beth Kanter
Beth Kanter’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in a range of publications including X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Whale Road Review, and Cease, Cows. Her chapbook Slasher was shortlisted in the 2024 Yellow Arrow Publishing and Black Sunflowers Poetry Press chapbook contests, and she won a UCLA James Kirkwood Literary Prize for her novel-in-progress, Paved With Gold. When not writing, Beth leads creative nonfiction workshops. You can find her online at bethkanter.com and follow her on Bluesky and Instagram @beekaekae.