Brunch Bracket: The Craft
1. Sarah Bailey
I scry in the new girl’s green eye: something wicked this way comes. Oops, it’s just my reflection. Both the horror and the answer to the horror that we were raised by television and the top forty more than by our absent parents. Tomorrow never knows, but today’s menu features macaroni and cheese and a can of Tab, the comfort foods we made when we were seven. When you are invited to the grown-up’s table, everyone already sitting there looks younger than you. This is not to say they’re more innocent. They’re certainly not more intelligent. It’s hard to make friends and what’s a little revenge gag between friends. Don’t poke the parakeet. Just carry it out to the beach at night, single file with the common intention of calling the corners. Don’t ask why you’re left holding the bird, the air sign, while the de facto leader of this girl gang is holding the earth animal. You’ve learned your lines. Just say them. Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the North, powers of mother and earth. Hear us. Then you’re free to go back to the land of school, land of the bad boys and mean girls, and wait for things to get weird because they always do. Learn you can move four hundred miles away and it will be the same as soon as you turn on the radio. Most of all, know in the first five minutes that nothing makes everything all better again.
2. Bonnie Harper
The scars jacketing her back always seemed easy to me. How nice to make up stories about all the fought-off dragons. How nice to be out of the closet, however involuntarily. When you’re ugly on the outside, there’s much less pressure. But Bon had a gorgeous face and that contrast ate away at her. It’s easy to believe in magic when science has no cure. When it worked, we all found a deep satisfaction in the miraculous peel of mottled tissues, and she shed and shed until she felt almost whole again. For a week or so, she wanted to eat three meals a day in the school cafeteria. She bared her arms. Then her neck and shoulders. The day she got detention for wearing a backless halter top was the best day of her young life. Every square slice of greasy pizza and side of lukewarm fries was the most delicious thing she ever tasted. I knew that was her scars on the inside talking. Soon enough those inside scars would be whispering that she could stand to lose fifteen pounds. Maybe the easy way. Bonnie had a good cocoon going on for years and years until we marched her down to the beach and made her a butterfly. Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the South, powers of fire and feeling. Hear us. Bon had the best cackle out of any in our circle and for a few days it poured forth from her with ease.
3. Rochelle Zimmerman
Neither of us can tell blonde girls apart, so I never quite knew who bullied her in gym class. Neither of us even wanted to call it that because when adults do it, they just call it racism. Nobody had ever kicked me out of the pool for being a queer, but I was hiding it and Rochelle couldn’t hide being melanated. Her anger seemed legitimate to me, seemed like a case of battle magic in the ongoing swimming pool wars more than any simple vengeance served wet. Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the West, powers of water and intuition. Hear us. The blonde girl had power in her hair and we stripped it. When she pulled off her bathing cap and a chunk of hair came with it, our eyes ate up every individual strand like it was popcorn at the movies. We listened across the locker room while she wailed in the showers, side-eyeing each other to check for any signs of remorse. We should’ve pulled some cards on it first. Rochelle had a real knack for that and for levitation. She spent all day being as stiff as the diving board, then came home to us and got light like a feather. I asked her once how it felt to levitate. She said it was like being a fish, like you are suspended in a situation where when you get out of it, it hurts for a minute as you gasp for your life.
4. Nancy Downs
Nancy is strapped to her gurney at the wrists and ankles, propped up on three pillows so I can feed her a fruit cup. Sometimes there’s a cherry in there, but there isn’t today and she accuses me of stealing it. Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the East, powers of air and invention. Hear us. She’s making a hell of a racket just jangling her soft cuffs against the creaky metal guardrails on the bed, writhing like a snake, still full of sudden moves after all these years. I look into those raging blue eyes and ask if she remembers drinking all the wine in the cup we all shared, if she remembers ordering one of everything. Nancy liked to pay for things when she had money. We even had a sports car for a while. The money is gone and so is her mother, so now she belongs to the gov. I ask if she remembers the jukebox. Everything on her mom’s fancy jukebox was Connie Francis. I hum a little of “Who’s Sorry Now?” because it soothes her, as long as I don’t say the lyrics. She asks for a cigarette and when I remind her that I’ve quit she hisses that she can smell the smoke on my clothes. We settle into talk of happier times——what it was like to fly, to walk on water, to wear sunglasses, to kiss girls, to take the bus, to smoke. Nancy’s fondest wishes all remain murderous.
5. Lirio
The elders watch us lift their painstakingly collected precious treasures from the shop and give us grace. The elders whisk us into the back room before our urgent tragedies can truly strike, the glancing blows of teenage drama barely scratching their thick skins. They interrupt our antics with reminders to stay hydrated, smile at the sins of our brazen youth. They worked their magic so that we might feel so free. If you ask, Lirio will tell how and when and why she came from Barcelona, traveling at the speed of wind against the wishes of the harpies. She will tell you that her name is the Spanish for Iris, goddess of the rainbow, possessing valor of the warrior, faith in the divine, wisdom of the world. She invited me into her house on the sabbath and I sat at her kitchen table for two, saying nothing while she cooked, studying an elder who seemed always to know what to do, whether chopping vegetables or binding demons. She made excellent hummus. She poured the loveliest shade of tea. Every grain of sugar sparkling, every bite the perfect temperature. I learned all I could from Lirio and it was only a fraction of what she knew, of what she could do. I took everything I could from Lirio and it was less than she wanted to give. There is no good verb or sensible noun for this kind of love. If there were, I would have found it at her feet.
Brunch Bracket: Death Becomes Her
1. Madeline Ashton
Here lies a test humans are designed to fail. All of us become the Madeline when we are suddenly within reach of our grail. When I sit down across from her those eyes hold a little glint of mirror. We squint at each other and wonder which of us is the inferior. I believe my mother thought her mother was one of these, but I never caught a glimpse of it myself, never knelt before any pressure to please. My grandmother was a diva who owned every product made by Clinique, and she was absolutely my first superstar, not chasing youth at all, just astute in her drag and quick like a queen to critique. My gran was never interested to get in on the celebrity game, which is what really reduced Madeline——not her age, but the poison of fame. And here we are now sitting down at this table, one of us in jeans and one an undead fable. She leans in and cuts directly to the chase, asking for the secret to the smoothness of my face. It’s only that I keep my visage plain and I could see how deep the well this answer dug within her pain. You cannot imagine how much satisfaction this scene gave, though I still would gladly fix her brows until she finds her grave. But to my shock she held aloft her sparkling crystal cup, tick tock tick tock, my dear, she said, I still suggest that you drink up.
2. Helen Sharp
From Helen I learned how to cling to a single knot on a very thin string. For Helen, a grudge is a beautiful thing——a fire to be fed until you are dead, a tune that the bird inside you must sing. If at first the bad vibes are only a murmur, with astonishing speed they can bleed into murder. With a friend like this, you just better not hurt her. Lest you find seven years later your bestie is also your most vehement hater. I confess I felt for her when that bitch took her man, but each of us must overcome what wretchedness we can. I thought she should get on with life when that dork made her friend his wife. But poor Helen looked in the mirror and said screw it. Who knows how she found the right potion to do it. How she paid, how she waited, why she never got through it. Any time she would mention my good looks I would pivot and discuss my good opinion of her book. Many cups she offered me, but none that I would taste for fear of arsenic, so every beverage went to waste. At least Helen was too literary to be doing kitchen things, and therefore when we brunched it was all junk, edible to me thanks to pre-packaging. It took me years to give up what I tell you with a shudder: the thing I learn from Helen is that women cannot trust each other.
3. Lisle Von Rhuman
Some of us were never young. We were born into difficulty, like having two hearts but missing a lung. Do what you like to much improve the artifice on the surface, while inside always roiling is a loud and scary circus. No wonder she was stingy in delivering her invitations. When mine arrived, I suppose it felt like vindication. In circulation were hors d’oeuvres of every kind, resting easily in my stomach but not quieting my mind until at last a servant whispered to me it was time. It’s in a private room that she presents her liquid innovation, the promise of erasure and a mythic rejuvenation. She paints a picture of a life that is miraculously fab, if only you pay everything and never think to blab. Sacred is the secret though of what she must’ve paid since she strayed off that path the clock for all of us had laid. The story of her origin obscured, she lives on as porcelain, unchanged and yet matured. Surround yourself with golden gods, do endless laps in the pool. At some point you have seen the world and must admit yourself a fool. So maybe Lisle lives forever in her castle on the hill or maybe she throws herself from a turret once she has had her fill. Because after a while her youth and beauty blend into her snooty, bloodless throngs and the real problem is not that life will end, but the justice that it is long.
Brunch Bracket: The Golden Girls
1. Rose Nylund
Back in St. Olaf, Rose was known as a culinary master, from her eggs gafloofen to her svengabluten and even her gerfloogenblergen. And if you hold your nose while you eat it, her sparehuven krispies taste just like strawberries and ice cream. I was wondering if she’d make her infamous fish balls. Maybe she would conjure up some stuffed kaldomar or a creamy baked fiskegrateng. Her lefse skillet bread was pretty solid, so it took a while to chew. As sure as I was that this get together would produce a round of bacon-lettuce-potato sandwiches, Rose was full of surprises and had other proteins on her mind. When I complimented the turkey meatballs, she brushed it off——they were bought frozen from Ikea. Although I wouldn’t have minded finishing up with a maple syrup honey brown sugar molasses rice krispies log, it was too time-consuming to make on such short notice. The occasion was likewise rather informal for a delicate, towering humpaflagel cake, and I was glad for that because above all else, I wanted to see Rose’s vanskapkaka, wanted a friendship cake that simply says thank you for being a friend. We whipped it up together between herring and coffee. While I leapt to love the lemony sponge that wasn’t as soft as it first looked, Rose remarked that she had many times done better with the sweet almond crust. She might know better than me, but one woman’s flugelkaka is another woman’s Scandinavian crap on a cracker.
2. Blanche Devereaux
Blanche visibly blanched at the thought of cooking. As an infamous Southern belle and more infamous Miami resident, she simply wouldn’t have it. For several minutes she lamented the loss of her short-lived live-in cook, wiping her brow and fanning herself as she described those fabulous enchiladas rancheras. We landed closer to lunch than brunch, but you cannot argue with Blanche once she sets her mind on a vision. Because pitchers are for commoners, there was carafe after carafe of white sangria chock full of Georgia peaches until eventually we landed a little more on the side of drunk than tipsy, which we only discovered when we finally left the lanai. Then we were ravenous for a feast: the table turned from fried green tomatoes with comeback sauce to fried chicken and hoppin’ john. None of it was hot enough or spicy enough for Blanche’s taste, though you would never know it from how fast she cleared her plate while she regaled me with tales of her youthful glory days and then quite similar stories from last weekend. Her voice got louder and her pauses got more pregnant whenever our handsome server was in sight. And if you assume pecan pie would be our final destination, Blanche never ceases to surprise in the field of trashy but delicious: an orange poppy seed cake that involved nothing more serious than a box of yellow cake mix, a package of instant pudding, a bottle of orange juice, orange peel and poppy seeds.
3. Dorothy Zbornak
I’ve been blessed with a handful of good teachers in my life and sometimes that’s exactly where I turn to cry to when I need a dose of common sense that has somehow fled beyond my reach. By the look on my face, Dorothy knew that despite the hour this was not the time to break out her deli-style whitefish salad. We bypassed mugs of strawberry Quik and cut straight to the malts, chocolate for me and vanilla for her. Nor did she want to risk her allegedly dry and tasteless cupcakes as a suitable accompaniment, for this was an emergency. A crisis like nuclear war, depression, insomnia, or Mrs. Claxton’s funeral. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do, she said, we’re going to eat a cheesecake. Dorothy has solved one hundred and forty-seven problems over a cheesecake at this kitchen table. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, she said, and I was elated by that possibility until I turned around and saw she was talking to the dessert. Back in Brooklyn, she used to pick them up from Junior’s, Katz’s, Mia’s, Martha’s, Circo’s, Caputo’s, Cousin John’s, or even Fortunato Brothers. Here there was just the one good guy at the Publix bakery. Still the ceremony held and we did solve many problems over classic New York style, double fudge chocolate, varieties topped with ricotta, strawberries, hot fudge, chocolate sprinkles, whipped cream, or Oreos that we crushed ourselves in the names of all that ailed us.
4. Sophia Petrillo
Picture it: Sicily, 1922…Precocious little Sophia sits in her great-grandmother’s kitchen amidst a flurry of wildly gesticulating women who are arguing over the contents of a cauldron big enough to fit Sophia in it. This is the legendary salsa grandiosa, cooked up once a year for the village’s Festival of the Dancing Virgins. Over centuries, this recipe came to include one hundred and fifty-two ingredients as each Grisanti woman made it her own without erasing the contributions of her foremothers. Sophia watched wide-eyed as her great-grand stopped all further salt and pepper and garlic and onion debates by hefting the giant cauldron and hanging it in the already roaring fireplace. The radical addition of heat silenced all the presiding hot-heads. Sophia was right there to see it and taste one of the first spoonfuls. I was grateful just to hear this tale over her baked ziti with a far simpler red sauce, more like the one for the pizza recipe she shared with Celeste before Celeste ran off with a handsome pepperoni salesman and became Mama Celeste of frozen pizza brand fame. It may have been only mid-day, but Sophia said company always deserves dessert. I watched her own approach to stirring slowly over heat as we whipped up a wine-flavored zabaglione custard that we then covered in berries, the seeds of which got stuck in her bridgework. Next time she would show me how to do the double fudge amaretto ricotta cheesecake because, she said, we needed fattening.
Megan Volpert is author or editor of over a dozen books on popular culture, including two Lambda Literary Award finalists and an American Library Association honoree. Her newest work is Why Alanis Morissette Matters (University of Texas Press, 2025) and she won Georgia Author of the Year for Boss Broad (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). In addition to her witchery, Volpert’s other gigs include: part-time Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University, part-time Adjunct Faculty in the MFA Writing program at Reinhardt University, and Fellow at the American Institute for Philosophical and Cultural Thought. Her favorite revenge story is RuPaul’s unparalleled real-life rise to power against heteronormative culture.
The things published here are part of a larger book project, Coven Brunch, which is on a mission of queer punk feminist autotheorizing about 1990s popular media artifacts. Because Volpert is the tail end of Gen X, these are the women who raised her——an affective situation that is both the horror and the answer to the horror. Each part of this thing is constrained to 250 words, give or take five, and the entire collection is in this style. The totality of the parts will cover over 180 women across more than a dozen categories, such as Disney Studios, MTV, and women named Barbara.
