Mother arranges her death better than before.
Splayed across cement and crimson paint
that trims our house, she seeps
deep into the garage floor.
Father wears bifocals:
ambivalent & adaptations of color theory.
Hunched over her body,
he checks for lightness, saturation, & hue.
Particles rain down & gleam our eyelids.
We sisters blink.
Prisms reflect inside cavities.
Our eyes open & father is gone, or
maybe never there.
Middle sister whirls blue scarves round her eyes
not to see the afterimages imprinted by shadows.
She exits; scarves billow like streamers
& sting a cold, sharp breeze.
The youngest, nearly blind,
only sees in negative exposures.
She stretches out her toe to tap
our mother lumped on the floor.
We will later apologize
& blame this on her blindness.
I see matter absorb light.
Mother’s body dances, sparkles color
under father’s work lamp.
My hazel eyes shift & retract.
I touch her rainbow.
Mother reaches, grasps my hand,
twists my fingers into a gun shape
or possibly a misdirected Oklahoma
Gum along our molars.
We are thin.
Transparent sister skin.
Hunger gnaws underneath bone.
We are silent. Stolen scavengers.
Sweet. Chewed. Fermented.
Our hands twist together,
syrup spirals.
Inside our house
we wrap leftover wooden
sticks and worn cores in an empty grocery sack,
hidden. We wait.
Muted rooms swell and release.
Hours, until mother’s swift, long stride
across kitchen floor.
We sit, rumbled and hollow.
Between breaths she disappears
around and up the stairwell,
only savory vapors linger.
One by one we exit;
there is no more to come.
Silent world,
sitting across the road.
It hears our tart, hinged lips growl
but never speaks.
The world is present
but does not persist.
Our cores rot.
No more sweet. Just sour.
The sound of the axe crackles against the limb.
Above, clouds pull like taffy as
we huddle on the parched dirt lawn.
The wind attempts to break the pack.
Entwined, our chapped fingers numb from the invasion,
press against each other’s skin.
Pink then white thumb circles reside.
Father stops to wipe his brow.
Clenched hands, swift and eager, he collides with wood.
*
My sisters and I choose our own trees to plant.
The middle one chooses a cherry blossom.
She kneels,
resting her palms at the small tree trunk
Every flowerless spring, she pleads her tree to grow.
She waters. She tends.
Sometimes, sneaks out, shoeless, and pajamaed,
Under starless nights, she rests beside her tree.
She whispers secrets into dirt.
Buried and burdened, they lie.
I want to shovel, shake them loose from their grave.
*
The summer after we move to the country
My father plants over seventy trees.
I spend the remainder of my childhood
Mowing them down.
Tallied, labeled, and assessed.
15 Dogwood, 20 Redbud, 12 Bald Cypress, 23 Pine.
*
We burn branches.
Heaps of rustled amber and flecks of green
Spit out at the half-moon sky.
We burn them.
We burn.
One of us holds a watering can.
Like the tint of my lips
after those boys bite and peel
—shred my already bruised, plump
mouth. Devoured, I am quartered,
splayed across the backseat.
I reach out to attach my pieces.
Raw, I dab concealor.
I am hidden for Easter dinner.
Musty. Bittered. Brined.
Family eats, silently.
I needed those boys
to tell to me I smelled
of eucalyptus and saltwater.
Tasted like candied apples, sugared and spun,
before they raked words from my mouth.
Stolen. I am a guest in my body.
Clamped clamor stills the table.
Family breaths, gasps.
We are secrets.
I rub my scratched, bled tongue
inside my mouth.
Calms my want to speak.
Inside my room
I smear the makeup across my face,
pull and pick my skin. I bleed.
Sore jaw. Chafed cheek.
I want to scream: my teeth bite me.
Family, halved, portioned, and gagged
in separated rooms.
No one to hear me.
Still, I am silent.
Across a woman
mumbles:
Rate of train’s relative velocity
fear significant collision. Deceleration coordination required.
Repeating.
Halt.
Jerks forward.
Wrap ankle round
bar. Balance.
Passengers wait.
I want to open a window.
A man exhales beside me.
Hold still. Hold breath.
His air partly cloudy.
Windows don’t open.
Michael didn’t hear me,
last we spoke. Overcast sky above us.
Humidity cut our breath. He waited
for me to answer. Speak.
I had spoken softy and without
intention of being heard.
I made a secret.
Woman repeats:
Crash. Potential unknown high impact. Beware.
Wait bus.
I want to scream: fuck collision.
But I don’t. I just sit quiet
next to the man who is choking
on his own breath.
Margaux Griffith is a poet from the great state of Oklahoma—Labor Omnia Vincit
THE NEW
RULES OF
W R I T I N G
ISSUE:
S P R I N G
2011
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