Abstract
Lynne Procope
Salt and Stain
my name means salt
or; woman who dwells
upon a shore. my name
belongs to a woman who
never came back. my father
tells me he chose this name
to shape me from a jigsaw,
an ocean of women, each one
shifting, claiming power over
tide or binding or alchemy
each gone missing
in the month of my birth,
my name means iron under
suasion of a new moon. I am
the patron saint of stain.
each low tide draws on me
like a scar, pulls inward
upon the belly. my name
is the same in every mouth
the tongue, dragged against
the grain, from the tip.
Ghost
I lay in wait, a small wolf of grief,
watch over her, this broken girl
who should have been my mother.
in the room next door; women sing
out loud, wistful and sweet. Mama’s
low moans slip swirl about her body,
a shroud of mourning she pulls down
each time she wakes without me
in her body. Watch her hands now
first the belly, the bed rail, the sweat
drenched sheets, she reaches back
to press the thin walls, as if to drag
her life from ambulance, anesthetic,
scalpel, as if to reel back in this sharp
terror of the brakes screaming,
the brutal punch of grill to belly. She
claws for me, her nails snap and sliver.
These are the smallest of her fractures.
Watch how she collapses into sleep.
Each small coma a blessing. I become
hairless, I lose my father’s chin.
I give up his absent eyes. I’ll be nearly
unrecognizable to her and to those
who’d planned to cradle my round head
across their arms, to each uncle who
had mapped the arc of my first catch,
first girl, my first stolen bottle of beer.
Afterbirth
I broke three bones in my foot refusing to be born.
they coiled claw like and tore you wider open. You
held it against me, this living outside of your shadow.
You called me whip and error; for ten days, I had no
name. There are things I do not want to know.
How you must have twisted into the dark, the sheets,
the shapes of the night. This first fever pulling you
from the man, the house, your dream of a perfect life
and well fed family. All of this you never knew
of your mother. But whose eyes have I taken
if not yours? I left you a legacy of me, pushed
the dark wet cord of our connection deep inside of you.
I left it to smolder, to raise, to burst into a promise
we struggled to keep. Without your hands, I can never tell
if I take a fever. Mother, I burn for days with no hope
of medicine, sweat all night and dream escape routes,
higher ground. Whatever I left in you began to blaze at 3 am.
The blood backed up, turned angry, the flesh arranged itself,
cruel as adders, and hissed in your sleep. I became legend;
bearer of my mother’s mortal wound and you believed me
a threat. But without your hands I am afraid I miss
my afterbirth life, my own congregation of omens.
