Tag: family

Soaked

Art & poem by Elizabeth
SOAKED


I want you in my home to know you’re not alone 
in those long-shadowed halls paced by perpetually 
lost—dementia scouring their last stains of memory

          more than safe,
          I want you to feel safe
          yet I’m drowning in this 
          deep dank bog of lung

rain sluices from leaves beneath a starless sky
as distant shouts urge me to find my way back
yet I am beyond lost having unwrapped and dropped 
their safety rope from my waist so I could reach you
 
       all my cells replicated yours when you were 
       my sole cord to life—for that I worshipped you 
               till the God, Hormones, ascended

as I stumble over elephantine roots, 
machete through plants so large dinosaurs 
must still exist on this swampy earth,
my lungs match each step's suck of mud, 
every breath a drowning, yet I won’t 
release this taut line between us mottled 
with white ash and blood dark wine nor
understand how your Emmental brain 
won't let you walk or know where you are 
in time, yet provides lucid wit and end-
less memory for the inconsequential

                                    

       years now since I severed and flung 
our rope in your flames yet you remain 
      tangled as worry and seared to my palm
when I reach for you in wake or in dream
      unable to rest or breathe for want of you



Thank you to the editors of Melancholy Hyperbole for first publishing this poem in an earlier version.

Taken

flash fiction, pastel sketch & photo by Elizabeth

TAKEN

I’m haunted that it happened here. Thought this was a safe community. Yet Tammy took that woman’s diamonds, clothes, and almost took her life. She starved that poor woman under the guise of helping a shut-in. Tami helped herself instead. 

Never met the woman even though she lived across the street. Didn’t even know she was there for the longest time. Nice home but I thought it was deserted—blinds drawn, never saw anyone go in or out. That is till after I heard Tammy tell a neighbor, “…poor thing…broke her hip…no, no children…needs help.” After that I saw Tammy walking a runt of a dog that trembled and skittered as she drug it down the street till it did its business then half-choked itself lunging against the leash toward home. I’d see Tammy go in around dusk and leave not much after with bags in each hand and always two more tucked under her arms. 

I’m embarrassed I didn’t think about it till the deputy asked if I’d seen anything unusual. This was right after the woman’s son came. Apparently she did have a child and he fired Tammy and packed what he could in this tiny trailer hitched to his cigar box of a car. The deputy asked what I’d seen—wanted to know how often Tammy was there, if I’d noticed her wearing fancy jewelry, or how much weight my neighbor had lost the past few months. But all I’d seen was brown bags and that scaredy-dog and how skeletal that woman looked in her boy’s arms when he carried her to his car.

Thank you to the editor of Doorknobs & Body Paint for first publishing this piece.

Lizards In?

poem & photo by Elizabeth

ARE THERE LIZARDS IN YOUR FAMILY TREE? 

Do you scuttle lithely sand and stone,
peek out from rocks through half-shut lids
while others' hands are clasped in dance
beneath the bone-white crescent slit?

Are your eyes autonomous,
right darts to lips and left to toes;
as softer flesh sips steamed orgeat
do you watch the spoon, the ankles cross?

Do you begin each day with push-ups
then shield yourself from sun in shade;
when threatened do your muscles flex,
your speech reduce to a chortling hiss?

Do others comment, How cold your hands,
how dry your skin? Do you dream of
grasshoppers sweet in your mouth, or
screaming wake from the jaws of a snake?

Thank you to the editor of Something Like Homesickness: A Zapizdat Poetry Anthology for first publishing this poem.