Issue 4:1 I Poetry I Lisa Parker

Three Poems by Lisa Parker

 

At the Edge of the Family, I Favor Her

for Lindsay Paige

 

Because she is always covering something,

  her body with tattoos and piercings,  her mouth

when she laughs, her ears when she thinks no one

  is watching and she aches for silence outside

this noisy family.

  Because I have seen her sway, eyes closed,

in the back lawn to Grandma’s radio leaking country classics

  out the kitchen window, propped open to air the heat,

because she would deny dancing to that music,

  adamantly, deny dancing at all, moving her body in a fashion

so predictable to music so hick, so us.

  Because she sits close to me at these family functions,

her long fingers rubbing nervously against each other,

  stilling when I lace them between my own.

Because she is seventeen and it has somehow come to her

  that she is a lesser version of this swarm

of well-meaning, judging people.

 

  I hold her close to me when she allows it,

trace the butterfly inked into the back of her neck,

  tell her she is lovely, unique, tell her                                                                                                    

I have seen her dance, barefoot in the summer grass,

  that the sway of her hips,  her arms above her head

are so graceful, she is fine and white as the egrets

  we watched together at the pond’s edge

when she was small enough for my lap.  I tell her

  she is such a sight to behold

I cannot hear the music.

 

 

 

 

Picture of Old Mountain Woman with Frail-Looking Boy

 

I.

 

She swore by the prickly-ash trees

for their easy cure of tooth ache,

showed him the soft, translucent dots

on leaves she ran across the back of his hand,

as if touching them would commit them

to his memory, would guarantee the passing

from her generation to his. 

 

II.

 

The explosions were like shotgun fire,

wrecking the silence of dire winter

and he pressed himself to her side, scratch

of wool that she held him against, though one hand

pressed flat to his back, pushed him forward

toward the destruction, the other hand,

waxy smooth fingers tracing the veins in his palm

as she told him how when sap rose in maples

and poplars, it sometimes froze, exploding

the tree, imbedding splinters in oaks nearby.

 

III.

 

Her mind is old now, one tree blending

into the next and he takes his place

at her side, reminds her which leaves or bark

bring down fever, which ones a cough.

But those days will always be

about his easy flinching

and the way she pushed him with sure hands

over ground covered in pieces of wood, things

brought down from the inside.

 

 

 

Bloodroot

 

I.

 

He has rolled away from me

in sleep, though the heat still moves

between our bodies.  His skin

will keep this flush for hours.

I have watched it before, this slow

fade of color, like the last bit of anger

giving back the tempered flesh.

 

My forefinger against his wide,

Slavic cheek, eyes moving beneath lids,

his mouth drops open slightly, closes

again.  I want to put my hand there,

his mouth, keep it from rolling angry

words into the next tirade when this flush

has gone and we are again only

two people at odds over every thing

but this heat between us.

 

A red welt beneath his ear,

where, at the curve of neck,

I have marked him, and I cannot

recall how much of that was passion,

how much anger.  I touch my lips                                                                                          

to that spot, feel the blood beneath raised skin,

the heat of it.  His breath catches.

 

II.

 

Grandma called it sweet slumber, that juice                                                                                      

she squeezed from stem to drop onto sugar cubes,

slip into our mouths to quell a hard cough.

 

Sanguinaria.

 

Bloodroot.

 

Reddish-orange fluid leaked

from broken stems that looked for all the world

like bleeding, thin fingers;

crooked, bent, pointing.                                                                                             

 

III.                                                                                                                                                                      

 

As a child, I took the dare of older cousins,                                                                                        

broke the root, tore stem from scalloped leaves,

white, star-like blossoms, touched

seeping red to the tip of my tongue.                                                                                                       

 

There are things in the forest

that will kill you with ease,

give you only the slightest, tart

warning of toxin and I was sure,                                                                                                               

in that moment when my tongue pulled back

and I spit, hunkered close to ground,

that this root was the end of me.

Wrong season, too close to the last frost,

maybe.  You could eat a plant ten different ways

without harm, but eat it once

in early season, once

with the wrong time budding

and it might take your breath from you,

your sight, the feeling in your hands and feet.

 

I rolled against crunching leaves on the slope                                                                                  

of mountain, spitting wildly, vaguely aware

that Grandma had come to the commotion,

taken the root from the boys,

laughed.

 

When she lifted me to her shoulder

and said, They’s a reason I cut it with sugar,

I relaxed into the ease of her voice, the sway

as she shifted her weight one leg to the other.

 

IV.

 

He turns his head toward me now,

eyes opening.  I want to remember them

like this – brown as chicory and soft                                                                                                      

with sleep, without question. 

I take my fill quickly, memorize

flecks of gold and green in dark brown,

 

roll away from him, close my eyes,

and think of that day on the mountain -

Grandma balancing me on the point of her hip,                                                             

lifting my face to whisper,

Never take nothing to your mouth you ain’t tamed yet.