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"In the Oven," "Night and Night," and "Gulls Calling over Corcaigh" Editor's Note: These poems originally appeared in Luna Luna Mag and have been reprinted with permission. In the Oven behind the deli counter behind the man in white the moon is dripping fat like candlestick wax on the countryside below (valley of flesh below). I ask him, is that meat clean? like the silver dollar I polished when I was four—drop and rattle-- in the metal horse’s belly, a slot up in its withers, the bank lodged in her ribs. I’d stare in that void and wish myself in. You see, I’ve been saving myself up since I was young. I’ll be clean like that, I say to the man, the day my body is thin-gone and can’t feel anyone. Florescent lights cleave me in two I ask, who is carving away legs arms heads tissue stretched cartilage stripped of curdles? Who can feel nothing through no membrane? Once I could feel everything when I was young: him ripping in taking everything. I say, I wore my candy wrapper skin so tight he used to take it off at night. Bare bones clinking licked clean. Who could hear my squalling over all that? (she heard, I know she heard) When boots hit the floor, my nerves ride a scalpel (even now) a scalpel cut around the cyst cradled in my tendons snapped when he arced my wrists back like a r a i n b o w. He whispered, I’ll fuck you dead. His thumbs found my throat and choked me back into the rainbow. She said, Go on, tell the doctor. You hurt yourself doing cartwheels. The membrane glowed under surgical light. Mucinous fluid made a full moon, an oven lamp, that lit the room as I counted backwards: I’ll fuck you dead. I want to say, all that fat on the country’s side, imagine it, bright and brilliant slick like an Easter ham, human faces pressed on a window, what a generous night. What a timely celebration of regeneration. I want to say, my cells will renew themselves, but girl, don’t fool yourself. Tendons won’t knit back together and neither will you. There will be no cave for your bones forever rising and falling for your bodily sacrifice. And that’s not all. Bodies picked clean. Bodies taking all they can. I want to say, the body houses those memories too dangerous for the brain. Shallow sparrow breaths rip over bare nerves, sharp ghosts through the muscles, bones, the pelvic bowl. Save it for later—trap the pain. Wrap me up in cellophane. My bones shook, shook clean, shook dirty-clean I’m saving myself. Cold turkeys stick bloody to their wrappers and I want to say, hours later, I dragged myself to the couch and slept under the skylight moon. I woke screaming in the early morning thinking he was the silver greasing me. Blood stuck me to the upholstery so floral that no one would notice the wound within wound without. Only the morning light asks, What happened here? And only to be polite. No, I’m not ordering anything, sir. You don’t want to hear it, I know, and I don’t want a thing. I’m saving myself up for all that country side, and all those ribs turning over for our teeth. I’m just one tray in the oven-- please, let me say I’m done. Night and Night We cut red apples in half to expose their stars. If the seeds kept their modesty, no nicks from our knives, we were safe for that day. We drank boiled tea berry tincture collected from the woods behind the house, growing beside the snake berries that looked like sisters full of poison with smaller, furry leaves. We carried them in denim aprons bulging with the summer scent of winter. Our hair skimmed the waist bands of our jeans, your hair yellow, mine some bitter chestnut unfit to eat. We changed our surnames to Night-- hidden sisters. Your body was an elongated branch, silver. I was gold silt beneath the river. Your toes were straight and thin with long nails that clawed me as you slept. I stayed awake to watch over us, sifting night through my belly, remembering what could happen to little girls in darkness and working at forgetting. Sometimes, I told you what happened so you gave me an “amulet,” three plastic jewels melted together with a tail like a comet, for protection you pressed it into my palm. You seemed glad to teach me to believe in something. But when you left, he still came, dragged me into his basement. I clenched your magic into a diamond of pain. In the summer, we ate Wise potato chips in my basement, cool as a cave. You pronounced them whiss even though an owl winked from the bag. I kept telling you, It’s wise. It’s WISE, until you cried and I was glad to teach you that only true things hurt. Like when you cried before our bath curled on the red chair over the heater, repeating, He said I’d be good if it hadn’t been for Eve. How could she damn us all? I put my had on your naked shoulder and said, Your father is an idiot. I was glad to teach you that not all family should be trusted. In the boxy, white tub, with the spout in my back, we imagined our husbands as we soaked with all the lights off—the shadows were like water, rippling by one candle burning on the sink. We knew each other like the picking path humming poison and cure for so long. The woods were the only kitchen we wanted. Even so, I said you’d marry into a mansion, comfortable with his rectangular good looks and opulence. I needed to bestow obscene wealth upon you somehow. Your whole house would be cold, cream marble and you would find a measurable happiness in that. You looked skeptical. When it was your turn to pick mine, you said, You won’t marry. You expect too much of people. That’s when I was sure you’d leave me rotting in New Hampshire because my body was an hourglass built to age on a shelf beside an apple with split seeds. Built to shatter in someone’s angry hands. Of all the men in the whole world there’s got to be one who will respect me. (I needed to believe in something.) No, you shook your head. You want people to be good when they never are and never have been. I stood dripping from the tub. The spout scraped my spine all the way down, stirred the blood beneath the skin like mud in a river bed. Will we be friends when we’re old? I wanted forever the first kind answer of the evening. I don’t know. Your eyes were dull in the water, and your mouth straight like a knife’s back. People change. And you were glad to teach me. You didn’t know it then but when I handed you the towel, I swore on your dead eyes that night would always run through my guts and after you were finished and changed I’d ask a cut star to upend me so I’d know night again. Gulls Calling over Corcaigh I’m swept down Patrick Street too near Christmas and rest my head on shoulders passing by-- alarmed passers-by cry out. Gulls cry out over a river of salt. Gulls open their mouths and call. I’m praying to be let out of the bell that rings free and drink the night by the spoonful like an oil for my health. In another time when I was a child in an American town, the cornucopia sat on a plate behind my eyes my world was embellishment inside a panoramic sugar egg and the frosting ducks were alive. The cornucopia came out on holidays and rested on the table where family extended and fruits leaked their swollen cheeks whenever they were touched, and dampness ran down their arms. (blood ran down their arms) Apples dropped from their hands and spilled their meal when they hit the floor. (in the basement my blood on the floor) I wedged between the cupboard and the wall praying not to be found in the dining room where I was told the cornucopia would gather flies if it were left alone. In the basement, I was fruit gather flies if left alone. I prayed to Persephone bedtime stories because father-god turned a blind eye because mother-goddess was useless because only incest in the Underworld she was told eat the fruit. That is the Order of Things. In Corcaigh, I run into the mall bathrooms. Salt burns my finger pads—there is heat when I wash, wash, wash the skin. Gulls crack their beaks and ejaculate. (I am stranded in the city of marshes) (I am a murdered child) (I am the Goddess of Hell) (I am not far enough away in Ireland) The banner above Marks & Spenser’s says The Holidays Are Coming and people select food fruit’s squeezed until it chokes bitten bleeds I am praying to a half a dozen jewel-like seeds I am for the ants to eat crawling in my throat I am for the ants to eat surging in the body throat. Holiday music wets the streets and the rhythm of earth says the holidays are coming to the ghost in my nerves says the holidays are coming and manikins wear party red party dresses. (I’m shaking shaking shaking all down the street and people, a lot of people, are looking at me) In the basement after the food cleared from our plates and I’d long been offered/forgotten in the basement I am five years old I am wearing white tights I am wearing white shoes white lace dress a fly bashes itself against the wall over and over and over fills my brain with its psalm I am praying behind my eyes frosting ducks nest on pomegranate beds I refuse to see what will happen next they shut the door tight my tights are white. paint the gusset pain red blood/red seed/red fruit red family stains the gusset red. White gulls gaping overhead. #Unreal #Poetry #Feminism #Womanhood #SexualAbuse #Memories #Childhood #TraumaPoetry #PersonalTrauma Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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