Annastacia Stegall
Things I Would Ask AI to Write:
An essay on Love, to get a good laugh.
A menu, full of various espresso drinks containing lavender.
The funniest WiFi network name, one that would put our neighbors to shame. Especially our neighbor Shaggy. That isn’t his real name, but he looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo and got in trouble the other day for throwing a party with minors and ultimately, drunk fighting a woman. It’s a low bar, but we need to upstage his FratHouse69 in an embarrassing way. Maybe then, he will leave.
A rising action.
Bar bathroom graffiti that will really make someone think, hard, about what Jack did to Clara, while sitting on the toilet.
An apology to a friend, for having to go to two doctors’ appointments and an ultrasound to receive an abortion.
A note for the DoorDash care package that will ultimately be sent her way.
An explanation for why a body, a female body, is considered soft, giving, moldable. A scream.
A word to tattoo above my knee.
A response to my ex after he proclaimed that if someone gets drunk enough at a party to
not remember if they said yes or no, it isn’t rape, it’s what they deserved.
Or to how he would brag about how good he was at giving head, as I’ve been trying to unlearn how to fake an orgasm since I left. In other words, an essay on how performative sex can be a shelter for a man’s ego, or in other words, an essay on how performance art can be used as a tool to keep people alive.
A comic relief.
A true story, where the protagonist has her apartment broken into, by a man, while at a Ke$ha concert. The place was opened wide, ravaged, and left in a paused state of disarray. After the police leave, she begins sweeping.
An advertisement for Astroglide lube, because why not? The world would be a better place if we casually talked about lube.
A climax.
Or a review for a pink vibrator bought online named Cynthia. A back up for when the climax is fabricated, a fairy tale, make-believe.
A dénouement where the lovers are not like Romeo and Juliet. Instead of dying, they battle to get the last word in. They both wait to pull out the big guns, to reference the other’s mother. Then, and only then, all bets are off.
An epigraph that instead of showing up at the beginning, shows up at the end. We don’t warn people in the beginning, giving them a fortune, in real life. One that perfectly sums up the shit show that life can be. Maybe similar to what Zora Neale Hurston said, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
A dedication page, to the men that catcall at the gas station. We wouldn’t know we were
attractive if it weren’t for you <3.
Speaking of gas stations, a title that holds the same amount of spunk as Kum & Go. A sigh, a sigh, a sigh.
A resolution with maybe a moan, but definitely a sigh. Something to tell the reader that this relationship is nearing the end.
Legend Says the Pearl Is Still at Annie’s Irish Pub Rolling in the Muck Protecting Women at Night
It’s comical even, how easy it’s become for Cassandra to say she would kill a man before being assaulted [again]. She doesn’t carry a knife, a cat self-defense key chain, a birdie. She doesn’t even carry pepper spray anymore since the last one broke with one careless drop. This ode to self-preservation that lacks any means. One drunken night, Cassandra lost a singular pearl earring at a bar. An heirloom that her mother passed down which had slipped from her ear after a man had grabbed her face, a hand resting upon either cheek as he began to lean in, for what seemed to be a kiss. She flinched back. The force of rejection is what caught her precious pearl and sent it flying. All night she searched the floor of the bar, scanning hidden corners with sticky remnants of rum and coke for this tiny thing of beauty. She hovered, waiting for the disco ball light to hit her sparkle within all that grime just right, a beacon within the vape fog. Under the DJ’s bass you could hear whispers. All the men chanting it’s what that bitch deserves.
Annastacia Stegall is a poet and graduate with an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. She is currently an adjunct at Gonzaga University and her work has been published in Expressions and BiFrost. Currently, Annastacia lives in the Inland Northwest with her feisty cat, Roscoe.