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Tuesday, August 16, 2016

RIBBED FROM THE HEADLINES

by Jill Crainshaw


When they strolled in the garden alone while

the dew was still on the apple blossoms, the
man gave the woman all the credit. “She
gave me fruit. I ate.” But as limelight
illuminates Olympic garlands “There’s the guy

responsible for it all!” Her husband. Take a rib
from a Bear’s side; “Wife Wins Medal!” Suture

buttons on free-flowing fabrics to dress up
mannequins on mega-fashion magazine covers;

thirteen cents an hour in undisclosed
back rooms. No one will ever know. Sew up a

presidential nomination; plunge a whetted needle
through “abrasion resistant” waxed canvas ceiling. The
morning headlines? “Clinton claims nomination” stitched
on the front page of the Tribune, history pocketed

in a photo of him, not her. Her clothes asked for it after all,
buried on page twelve bottom left

next to an ad for half price laundry detergent.


Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and a Presbyterian minister. Her work has appeared in Star 82 Review, Mused: Bella Online Literary Review, and Panoplyzine. She is a frequent contributor to the Unfundamentalist Christians blog.