Armistice
So the ceramic bowls shatter and coat
the kitchen floor. The pieces sway
on their curved faces, fracturing
the dark tile. Each step warrants
a shard in the heel, so no one moves.
It is enough, for now, to gaze
at the rise and fall of these pieces,
which hold no more than a bit of air,
some settled dust, the phantom
weight of our better halves. Hushed
words drop into the wreckage like stones,
and the air grows thick with clay.
Pickets
A root grows wrong between the wheel and the hose
and snags a rabbit’s leg before the fence.
It chews through bone for a parsnip and leaves
blood in the shape of something like petals,
getting as far as the twelfth stake before falling
with a hollow stem in its mouth.
I count to twenty before I step off the porch
and walk toward the piles in the yard,
I count again before I know that there is
no rabbit, really. I touch the root and press my face
against the hose, chewing at the insides of my cheeks,
letting my hair fall through the wheel in tangles.
It turns even when I know it doesn’t turn,
and I fold myself into a square patch.
I am crisp lines on the lawn, lines and letters
made by patterns in the yellowing grass.
You watch me from the house across the road
although I know no one lives there anymore.
I can feel you count to twenty against the window,
writing messages with your warm breath.
I count with you. I have been counting with you for years,
making the clouds full of us.
Drawn and Quartered
1.
I found a plastic bag of sweet rice juice, cut
its corner, tilted
my head back, stood
with my back
to the sun – the round,
grainy crystals making my spit sweet.
I ignored the drop of my stomach,
sick, emptied, ready
for the sugar slick in my throat,
spilling through me.
2.
I skim
over the blacktop,
the dark pitted fly tape
grabbing at my feet.
When I fall, my elbows scrape the sweating pavement.
I slip away, homeward.
When I open the door there is a box of mangoes
stained and sticky with juice.
3.
waxy and sugared
wrapped and foiled
bulbs falling from
the bus driver’s old heavy golden hands
I put flowers in them
my fingertips purpled
petaled
dozens of them mingling with his
then the chicken
caught between the coop’s wall and the wire fence
wings bent between the wooden beams
stared at me
and I stared at its
impossible white body
and told no one
4.
Submerged, backs curved and arms extended,
we revisit the depths,
welcoming its infinite pulse.
There is a need for precision, patience
in this memory space –
taking sugar for emergencies,
mistaking silence for comfort,
marking the ocean and its reluctance,
the pull, the wide release, its aftermath,
the skin puckering and softening on our palms.
Awarded: Honorable mention in the Spring 2015 UIUC Undergraduate Creative Writing Contest.
Wearing the Quiet hours
The paper insert told me they would be good for seven days
if I cleaned up below the water’s surface
(but loose petals stay because what reason
does a glass vase have to look empty).
We’ve been feeding on the same light and warm water
and the room sounds the same wherever we stand
but I haven’t opened as the flowers have,
their closeness making me want to trim their stems
until there’s nothing left. They live on so little
only to bloom
and never for themselves. Soon enough I’ll forget
about the floating leaves and the threat of algae.
I will worry myself with better things like crumbs
stuck between tufts of carpet and why
the bedroom clock keeps resetting at 3 PM
whenever I’m somewhere else—like a seat
away from a woman who presses her head
so hard against the bus window that her neck snaps
and the letter bent in her hand falls to the floor,
its words scattering the weekend’s dust and footprints.
Someone steps off the bus and goes
home to stick his face in a shopping bag. He wilts
as the plastic balloons with his air, and his wife plucks
the bouquet cradled in his arm. She kisses
his forehead. They talk about how the week drags
each afternoon to each afternoon,
wearing the quiet hours like mesh.
I lean into the curve made by someone else’s body
still warm from the shoulders down.
The woman waves at me from the sidewalk,
her neck still bent the wrong way,
holding a blank sheet of paper in front of her face.
She looks familiar, but I am distracted by the identical seats
suspended just outside my window,
and I press my face against the glass to see it all.
Awarded: Honorable mention in the Spring 2013 UIUC Undergraduate Creative Writing Contest.