Monkeys

Dorothy Albertini
· in

I’m sitting in a movie theater and I’ve got a one on my right and a one on my left. God I’m in love. He coughs, he laughs, they’re so loud the two of them and I’m so quiet. I’m such a quiet person and there’s the one, wearing a shirt I gave him, with buttons and a collar, a linen that was my brother’s before it was mine and was his before it was ever really mine but it was mine and I gave it to him and now, to meet me, he wears it. Ah. And the other. Has no one else to sit next to, but he has me, which is better than sitting alone. One reaches for my hand, one reaches for my foot.

Dorothy Albertini received her MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in 2008 and has been a Fellow at the MacDowell Arts Colony and Wellspring House. Her fiction and poetry appear in Chronogram, Shifter, textsound, Tantalum, Dog Under Porch and Milk Money. She teaches at Bard College's satellite campuses in New York State prisons and co-curates Bard's Roving Reading series.