Middle Child

 

 

She's born third and shares the shape of middle child with her sister

Her mother slots her into a feminine role, makes her do the chores

Her mother god-fearing enough to rub soap on her child’s tongue

when she cusses and takes the Lord's name in vain

Middle child that breaks the mold, cuts her hair and grins

Her raw tongue lashes out over the dinner table, fuck you, mom.

Rebellion never tasted like much until the soap faded away

 

 

Vivisected

 

 

          I’ve been banned from the kitchen. Mother didn’t appreciate me taking the cow heart meant for dinner to dissect it. It had been sitting on the pure white display plate in the fridge, untouched, pristine. I wanted to dissect it and see the parts that had made it function. Mother found me with the scalpel from the kit I’d gotten from Christmas the year before. Note, I’m now banned from using knives and other sharp objects. Mother says it isn’t right for girls to do such things.

 

          She’s taken the heart back, vivisected, ready and seasoned for a roast. It’s unsightly now, according to her, guests will wonder why she handled it poorly. But, if you stick it on high for eight hours in a crockpot all imperfections are melted away. It’s a crude job, I don’t appreciate it.

 

          It had looked beautiful, ventricles and atriums more real than school assigned textbooks. I long to see one beat, a real one.

 

 

Defiance

 

 

They say I've got a knife for a tongue

Daddio wanted to cut it out but

steel can't cut steel when it's cold

so they sewed my lips shut after

they found me with my tongue in

some girl's throat

 

They called me a murderous monster

a corruptor, but she liked it enough

to beg for more

Now she wants nothing to do with

my bloodied, torn lips

 

They used cheap sewing thread

the bastards couldn't even give me

something soft, like embroidery thread

They hate looking at me now

they can't take me smirking at them through the pain

 

There's this girl at school with

scabs around her lips, lipstick

bright enough to distract from them

I can't speak to her because,

you know, mouth sewn shut and all

But yesterday she cornered me in an empty classroom

her fingers traced my lips and it hurt but

she was gentle and shit if that ain't sweet

She talked at me, saying she knows how it feels

she's got the scars, she says I have to fight

she kissed my crusted lips with so little pressure

then she was gone, my lips tingling with something other than pain

 

They say I have a knife for a tongue

so at dinner I motioned for them to listen and they leant in

I ran my tongue against the inside seam of my lips

the cheap thread snapping easily as blood

trickled from the incursions

teeth and lips bloody

I grinned and said, “Fuck you.”

 

Mother’s Garden

 

 

Mother took me into the garden one day.

The eleventh day of summer in 1956.

She placed her feet one in front of the other,

avoiding stepping on her precious babies.

She made me take the watering can,

I held it with two hands,

one under the spout, the other

on the bottom, lifting it up.

She planted my feet in the middle of

 

freshly tilled soil in my own plot.

She made me water myself,

and on the twentieth day of summer

yellow bubs perched on evergreen stems

caressed my ankles, sprouting from my toes.

She made me water myself, day and night

but my can was running low and I asked for

some more water to keep myself alive and pretty.

She made me continue, no refreshments for me

as she sipped her homemade lemonade.

My buds never withered, I stretched my water thin

but I made it through to day thirty-one

only then did she gave me a couple drops of sugar water

for my complexion, it made my skin waxy

and my petals stiff as well.

On day thirty-seven she gathered herself at my feet

to watch the buds unfurl with pride.

I held my watering can, my arms aching

but a smile on my face nonetheless.

When the clock chimed noon

and the sun hit me with its warming rays

my buds started to bloom.

Mother gasped, hands at her mouth

I looked at her face and smiled

as the flowers unveiled human skeletons

from the waist up, limp from where they hung

weighing down the stems and sinking back

into the dark soil.

 

 

White Rabbit

 

 

          Hold in the tears, don’t let mother see. Tears soak perfectly into the wool of the sweater, into the couple of inches above the wrist. The fabric is dark enough, but your eyes are red and she might see.

 

          She’s on the couch to your left, watching the TV. You don’t make a sound, silent tears.

 

          The bunny on screen has died, and she’s on the couch watching without any emotion. Your eyes hold too much, enough for both of you. The bunny has died and you imagine what it might be like if you died from holding the tears in.

 

          You imagine you’re the bunny on screen. Would she cry, or watch the bunny die with no grief? The boy on screen cries and shouts, grasping for the soft white bundle in the dirt. Its red eyes are closed, but yours are open. And your eyes are red, and open and she cannot—will not—see.

 

          You are in the dirt and someone cries for you. Your red eyes are closed, the tears drying up.

 

 

Homage

 

 

          When I look down and see the foam wash up to cover my feet I wonder what would happen if my feet disappeared. Cut off at the ankle but no blood to lure sharks to the shallows. They'd slip out to sea, and maybe wash up on another shore. I'd have finally stepped foot in another country.

 

          I wonder if they'd stay fresh, containing magic after being cut off by water, imbuing them with mystical energy. Would they tan a golden color as they floated? The sun shining down on the sun tattoo on the top of the left foot. The nail polish baby blue, would it stay or wear away?

 

          I think I'd miss them terribly. The sun tattoo is my favorite, a gift for my mother. The light of my life, the creator of these feet. The beach was her favorite place. I wonder if she imagined her feet drift away with the tide.

 

          If mine floated away, as a homage to her, I think I'd be okay with it. So I stand and look down and wonder.

 

 

Woman of the Sea

 

 

Rising from the water, her skin glistens

Rays glinting off the juncture of the neck and shoulder

Dark hair weaves through the kelp

hanging in smooth clumps

draping over her breasts

Seafoam ribbons settle at her waist

Encrusted with coral

pieces rub together

singing a song from the sea

Legs, tanned, as is the rest of her

Sand caked feet stop

Takes in the sea breeze, deep breath

she smiles a mouth full of pearls

 

 

Grant a Goddess

 

 

The goddess moans blue blood unlike mortal red, her essence, her soul bleeds from her garden rusted tongue, blood vining across her bare breasts, greenish in its melancholic beauty, streams flow down the curve of her bend, blue waters like the way she walks on water, only now her feet smear death in their wake.

 

 

 

Mother of Muses

 

 

          Zeus cast the Muses down from Olympus in 1914, but the true date does not matter, not to Gods. Neither does reason matter to a God, the God of Olympus, the King. He had his reasons, albeit none the other Gods could agree but they stayed silent, they stayed safe.

 

          Apollo cried for his Muses. The Trial of The Muses was held at dawn, his sun drop tears rained down painting the court in sorrowful gold. A tear dropped on the heads of all nine of them, an extra fell to Euterpe. Though he had never spoken it aloud to anyone, she was his favorite of them all. He was forbidden, by Zeus, to interfere.

 

          Clio stayed silent, her mouth full of the horrors that have been and will be, blood wants to fill her mouth. Melpomene stood by her, their arms linked, she knew what was coming as well. Euterpe played her lyre, a low melancholic thing, accompanied by Erato and Terpsichore who sang despite the tears choking them. It is Calliope, Polyhymnia, and Thalia that plead their case. Their measured sentences, stanza-ridden, beautiful poetry falling on deaf ears, Zeus did not care for their pleas. He commanded the sky, a lightning bolt for each of them.

 

          Urania, the most silent of her sisters, stood off to the side. Her eyes filled with stars, lit by the bolt meant for her. She looks to the sun, looks to the only God she knows and sees everything before them. In an instant, she sees all their futures, every strife, every success. In an instant, Zeus strips her and her sisters of their memories and throws them down to Earth.

 

          Mnemosyne weeps for her daughters. Imagine, for a moment, what a mother must feel when her daughters forget her, the Goddess of Memory. They have forgotten but she must remember.

 

          They hit the globe in nine pinpricks of reality. Nine babies born at the same time. Babies of the morning sun.

          Calliope is sent down, her skin is golden, and she is raised into an educated young lady by her tutors, her human parents out of sight. She fears she will never be anything greater than herself, following the footsteps of dead philosophers.

 

          Clio is born into war-torn countryside, she is the only daughter that survives in her family. She carries the weight of everyone who was killed on her shoulders and her mind. She cannot sleep for fear of dead eyes consuming her.

 

          Erato grows into a young woman of the streets, and the older men long to tear her flesh from her bones. She teases them closer and accepts them in between her thighs. She does not love it and she longs for someone to fill the ache in her heart. Zeus forbids Eros from contacting her.

 

          Euterpe falls into a small family, her human father a pianist who teaches her to play. Apollo’s blessing follows her, and he watches her. Her lyre held in his burning arms, stained with his molten tears. The only time he smiles is when she plays.

 

          Melpomene is plagued by tragedy, she reads and lives it. Her husband raises his hand to her as her father had done before. She cries and reads and keeps quiet. The war rages on outside, but she is far too occupied with her own.

 

          Polyhymnia is born into the role of leader of her people. Her people dance around the bonfire, beads, and jewels dancing beams in the night. She longs to sing but she is quiet, her face stoic as her people praise the sky.

 

          Terpsichore is the best dancer in her class until a car accident falls her. She loses movement in her right leg; the bottom half of the left is amputated. She stays strong, but at night she longs to dance, and she wishes the sun would rise and kiss her forehead.

 

          Thalia never cries a day in her life, and her therapists say that she is fine, completely so. She feels fine as well but she doesn’t really know what fine or happy feel like in muscles and sinew, the therapists have never been able to tell her. For now, she mimics the smiles, the laughs, and hopes it is enough.

 

          And then Urania, she lays out in the night, looking at the stars. She plots them on her own, she learns and navigates by them. The countryside is perfect to look at them and she yearns. She sees them land on the moon and she cries because she is missing something that the maps cannot give her.

 

          Zeus will change his mind on the Muses in a few decades.

 

          For now, they are stranded.

 

          Mother Memory left with the memories of her daughters. Their golden vibrancy, though warm in her hand, weighing her soul with melancholy.

 

 

Heaven on Earth

 

 

Campfires smell of my mother’s arms,

her orange hoodie almost as warm as

flames licking wood chips

The stars pinpricks reminiscent

of the light held in her eyes

Lake water laps at the rocks as

her voice cleanses my mind

of all grime that clings to me

Surrounded by her but away from her

I see my brother’s fishing line

drop down, down, down and disappear.

 

 

For Mom

 

 

Her anger is sun-kissed lightning,

voice booming thunder when necessary

voice dark chocolate smooth when needed

Her embrace is heated, choked fire simmered

her perfume adding to sweet smoke

Her heartstrings alight with molten sun

setting her body ablaze with it