by Tina Kelley

The website said there were exploded bits of the holy in everybody,
so I put them on my bucket list. The lobby was welcoming, concierge
and maître d’ were all I could ask for. Lots of fun activities like parades
and pools and playgrounds. Food: consistent and potentially plentiful.

I really wanted to like this species, but other kids left a lot to be desired,
the ones the doorman called “common,” who tied me up back-to-back
with the only other only child. And that mean teacher, the sun-warmed
mayonnaise of her smile, put me in the hall twice for talking too much.

Middle school IF I COULD GIVE IT ZERO STARS I WOULD—whispers
in the backseat and getting ditched. And no one warned me that guys snap
their fingers at waitresses, drivers tailgate, fools talk in the train’s quiet car,
and doctors speak in acronyms, moving their mouths without sharing info.

I came back to downgrade my stars to 2 after wading through the cereal
shelves and finding only three healthy ones. Why is everyone staring
at their phones while sightseeing? Why was that meeting not an e-mail?
Looking back, I might’ve qualified for a refund—never had sisters, aunts,

brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews, or brothers-in-law. Never walked into
a bar alone, had a one-night stand, cooked a Thanksgiving turkey, skydived.

But when I hear my mix tape, meet the librarian who made a Reading Trail
through the park posted with pages of funny kid books, interview the boy
who got his class to shave their heads with the kid on chemo, when I garden,
decorate the community club for an eightieth birthday, think about my kids

and what they will look like when they’re 80, knock wood, when I pass
the turnoff for Shades of Death Road and hear yes, triple rainbows do exist,
when I see the silver carp rock-skipping themselves across the lake surface,
when my friend came with me to write mom’s Christmas cards from hospice:

Would come back. Would hurry back. Totally coming back.

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Tina Kelley’s Rise Wildly appeared in 2020 from CavanKerry Press, joining Abloom & Awry, Precise, and The Gospel of Galore, a Washington State Book Award winner. She reported for The New York Times for ten years and wrote two nonfiction books. She received a 2023 and 2025 Finalist award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She and her husband have two children and live in Maplewood, NJ.

by Tina Kelley

There are 70-plus females running around with them now, 
Paul Sprewell's tattoos: God’s Toy. God’s Secret. God’s Boricua. 
God’s Cherri, God's Bitch, God's Power, God's Virgin, God's Star.
The swirly dirt-gray script felt like a thousand stings across each neck. 
God’s 4 Life, God's Love, God's Angel, God's Blessing, God's Jewel, 

and God's Property. All of them worked for him, and he sent them out, 
to cars, to motels that smelled of bandaids and mold, to sweaty strangers 
who would steal their cellphones, reject the condoms, refuse to pay.
The girls called him God, his legal name. He got it from the bail jumpers 
he caught, after washing out of the Reading Police Academy. They'd say 

Oh God! because he's six-foot-five. Oh God give me another chance.
God don't take me now, I'll turn myself in tomorrow. So he changed it, 
legally, even on the voter card, and the article read "God is a Registered 
Republican," though the DMV fought back. Not Visa. He signed God 
whenever he bought them tight jeans or extensions or manicures.  

Too bad if you hate the mug shot, the shit-eating grin, the brows rising 
up at his joke, too clever to believe. Look closely and you'll see angry 
scratches on both cheeks, defensive wounds, red screams branding him 
with "No! I won't!" with “You ain’t God!” CashMoneyBrothers.com 
is not an escort service, it's where men pay to rape women over and over,

young women, some children, females who truly would leave except 
he would beat them, or he'd tell their families they were nothing but ho's, 
or he'd beat their sisters, hunt them down and turn them out, too. 
God's Brown Sugar said she wouldn't leave because he called her pretty
and bought her nice clothes and gold earrings, and said "I love you,"  

and no daddy ever told her that before, only God Daddy, 
which is what he made them all call him. So what would God, 
true God, have to say? Aren't all women God's Diva? Isn't every woman
God's Precious? Aren't those lips for laughing, shouting, telling stories?? 
Those hands, for creating and clapping? Isn't 25 to life too kind?

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Tina Kelley’s Rise Wildly is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press, joining Abloom and Awry, Precise, and The Gospel of Galore, which won the Washington State Book Award. She co-authored Almost Home: Helping Kids Move from Homelessness to Hope, and shared in a Pulitzer covering 9/11 at The New York Times. She and her husband have two children and live in Maplewood, NJ.