Game Enjambment is a reoccurring poetry series on games and gaming.
It’s a dream world, so I thought What the heck.
Don’t throw the Shirley Temple science lab flask
sprouting from a ruddy tuft of grass.
Don’t go to Subspace within Subcon
for a few cherries and coins
and the odd mushroom.
For once, instead, make like
this is Wonderland and
Drink Me.
Its taste:
cherries and coins
and the odd mushroom.
Its texture:
rubber bands snapping in my throat,
coins spinning down behind my breastbone,
palm trees teetering in my stomach.
Its effect: A doorway sprang open
in me, an inward passage of my innards
to that alternate
dimension. I closed my eyes,
finding dusk blue sky,
black silhouette,
negative afterimage
of not-me
or too-me.
I opened for a scream,
mouth widening,
doorway closing,
palm trees lurching,
eyes glued shut
on that narrow twilit interior world
until I found myself
expelled back into normality.
Sevenish seconds of
off-color introspection
didn’t boost my life or grant me magic.
May have done the opposite in fact
(so typical for a mirror world).
I prefer to travel my whole body places,
use external receptors, throw the flask after all.
Better to step through a distorting doorway
than open one within. Better warping surroundings
than a warped sense of self.
Read more of the Game Enjambment series.
Katherine Quevedo was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband and two sons. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award and has appeared in NonBinary Review, Songs of Eretz, Honeyguide Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Her speculative fiction has appeared in various anthologies and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing old-school video games, watching movies, singing, belly dancing, and making spreadsheets. Find her at www.katherinequevedo.com.
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