A Girl Can Dream
CW: IPV
FREDDY
This is it, Jennifer! Your big break in TV!
he rams her head into the screen with hideously brutal force——
—A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
the girl has a dream
to be a star
it’s the 80s and light
-ness around dark
humor abounds
it’s the 80s and a girl dreams of being light
as a feather stiff as a board and is touched
by friends whose names she will audibly berate
herself for not remembering though her husband doesn’t
care he just wants her story to be over
the girl dreams and the man she dreams of
because her fear does not exist
in a vacuum but in the colliding
molecules of America
arrives with knives on his fingers and calls her
name and then in a line
not in the script calls her bitch
it’s the 80s come on
in my kitchen was recorded by Robert Johnson
in 1936 wherein he croons the ultimately flirtatious indictment
when a woman gets in trouble everybody throws her down
lookin for her good friend none can be found
you better come on in my kitchen
babe it’s goin to be rainin outdoors
and exactly fifty years later
four men wrote the death of a girl
for profit via the medium by which they earned their profit
to avoid fainting
keep repeating it’s only a movie only a movie
was the tagline for wes craven’s first major release
the last house on the left
in which two girls are [insert what you imagine and it probably occurs]
and one girl’s parents murder the villains in their home in scream
the boy behind ghostface believes a dead girl
would be justice for shame and shame requires sacrificial slaughter for healing
one thing about wes
the man
dreamed a whole hell of a lot
about revenge
in the original the original
girl dreams of heat and sets Freddy ablaze
but something stopped him
from breaking down to ash I think
because the writers wanted him to come back for what
good is revenge without a body
to dream of dancing on
when the monster is dead but gone
is the woman still too
it was the 70s
when Francine Hughes set her husband’s bed afire
after police refused to arrest him because he hadn’t assaulted her
in front of them
forgiveness isn’t real
it’s that
flames from the body of a burning monster
setting a woman’s face
aglow
men dream of
vengeance and women
make their dreams come true
Shit Ghazal
My love.
In the end I’ve become
your poop.
——Mitsuharu Kaneko, tr. Hiroaki Sato
Our last night, my last love gave a thousand & two shits.
She wept at open drawers, blessed my dress shirts, the new shit.
When I’d bagged my shoes, unfinished our room, she asked
who. Saw right through shit.
Think of all the right words. Think again.
Now they’re gone. Now back. Now shit.
I left mouthwash & the key, leftovers & the state
——none of that to-&-fro shit.
I lied to you about my drawers, her tears. She stood
up & said, You’re gonna let me help you pack your shit.
Did she laugh, Kaneko, leave you like home? Believe
me: she knew love when she was most alone, turning locks to shit.
Tim Lynch was awarded a 2025 Individual Artist Fellowship by Delaware Division of the Arts. His work has been nominated for Best Microfiction 2025 and a Pushcart Prize, has placed in the 25th annual Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition, appears most recently in StoryQuarterly, Broken Antler Magazine, and Cul-de-Sac of Blood, and is forthcoming in Gather (@gatherpoets). He earned an MFA at Rutgers-Camden, and lives in Delaware, where he works as a paraprofessional. His favorite revenge story is The Crow——both the mostly-1989 Caliber Comics series by James O’Barr & the 1994 film dir. by Alex Proyas (The Crow: Dead Time [1996] from Kitchen Sink Comix is awesome too!)
