Monthly Archives: February 2022

“One Love” Post #18: “Elegy”

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MARYAM BARRIE

Elegy

I slowly pour the grey grit and powder
of my mother’s ashes into mason jars

for my siblings and daughters. I wear
a mask and nitrile gloves to keep the dust

of her contained. I don’t want to waste her
on my skin. I cover each layer of ash with

dried rose petals –a sort of mom parfait
for each of us. When I scattered what remained

of my childhood friend in the Raisin River,
I coated my hands with him, put the fine gravel

of him to my tongue. My therapist tells me
harsh, toxic chemicals are used in cremation –

we shouldn’t ingest them. Still, I was glad
to take something of him into me for safe-keeping.

I learn from my mistakes. There is much in me
of my mother already. I don’t need more.

There were ways she was toxic, but I don’t
think of her as harsh. She used to say

I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. Her silent
resentments and frustrations permeated the air.

In my recent dream, she was trying on a second
life as a hands-on healer, anointing sleeping

patients with oils and prayer without their doctors’
consent. I worried she would get into trouble.

She no longer had a phone, or money, because she
was dead. Then, she was lost, and I had to find her.

I still can’t find her, though I’m receiving her last
pieces of mail. I’m compiling her tax documents

to posthumously file her last year of obligation
to anyone. Her rose-layered ashes radiate

something I still can’t understand
from the jar where they wait –

how she turned from living to dead,
how the old anger dried up and left me.

“One Love” Post #14: “Mine”

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LUCAS FULLER

Mine

Your laughter is honey-sweet
Like music to my ears
Your words sound soft as snowy down
And soothe all my fears

Your hair is gold as shining light
Like grain sown in the field
Your arms are my confidence
Your sympathies, my shield

Your eyes are the deepest lake
Like precious stones they shine
And If I had but one last word
I would call you
mine

“One Love” Post #11: “a minute in winter, a second in summer”

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MONA MOORMAN

a minute in winter
The blue jay bullies his way to the feeder forcing finches to peck at bits of millet and empty
husks that scatter and sink into the inched layers of still soft snow.
Cardinals in flaming feathers and mad masks jot the trees like
stop lights, while the puffed up dove mourns from a stiff branch.
The old dog trudges through the spiritual smoothness of monotonous white, as birds scatter like
frightened sparks as though he could sprout wings to steal their suet.
I watch him plow through thick virgin alabaster, high stepping paws, out of sync, walking on
voltage, as the frozen talc packs into his pads.
A fallen scent, pushed along by the rimed edge of a solid pearl sky, catches his nose with a
curious out of season cupidity.
I think he wishes he were still on the sweltering veldt of his native Rhodesia, scouting for lions.
He sniffs the edges of the marsh, noting the bones of snow that lie upon
the nameless color of slush, and shivers on to the bare pussy willow
stripped of its fuzzy fingertips by hungry deer.
The woodpecker in his convict uniform returns for a greedy peck
at a black sunflower seed, as the dog shakes his way back inside
to sprawl by the fire and dream of the high sun in July.
 
a second in summer
Paws smelling of summer dirt crumbling under cracked leathery pads he sniffs the curlicued
miscanthus tips, making sure he’s been there before with no one after; a rabbit stands on the edge
of the woods, a furry mannequin, ready to high hop and hide.
With heat hard against his ridged wheaten back, the dog glances sideways, pausing, a snout
straight up to the sky, side eyeing a spindly legged heron
heading for shallow water to make a meal of minnows.
The old dog’s licorice nose twitches at the hidden, under dead leaves, in the creek bed; all
dancing is stopped for a brief intermission.
Chickadees at the feeder, undaunted, steal sunflower seeds and head for
dead branches while red-winged blackbirds pick out the millet and squawk to stop dainty butter
colored finches from having their fill.
Deep among the trees, an owl hoots who is next for subtraction from Nature’s manifest; cumulus
clouds randomly calculate their positions.
Wandering through tall meadow grass, the dog gives his shadow to the sun.
He circles to lie down, nose up-wind, catching the scent of his last Independence Day forever.

“One Love” Post #9: “My Lover, the Necromancer”

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KD WILLIAMS

My Lover, the Necromancer

I watch him resurrect an old woman
with long hair
in our bed in the early morning.
He has to move her limbs to free them
from rigor mortis.
She is confused about being alive again
and then about her long hair
(which I read grows after you die).
I tell her it will be ok,
not believing it myself.

I ask my lover why he raises the dead.
He says he’s found the cure to dying:
“The secret to staying alive
is keeping everyone too busy to die.”
He has a simple plan: to give this woman
a part time job at McDonald’s.
I try to stop him.
He is not the man I fell in love with—
He has become consumed by his work.
In the McDonald’s parking lot, I ask him,
“What’s the real reason?”
He says, “I’m a necromancer,
duh. I need bodies for my skeleton army!”
He says it like it’s the most obvious thing
in the world.
It is now I start to wonder
if I have always been alive.

I tell him I get visions that he will die
and no one will know how to make him rise again.
“My dear,” he says, “you could not
be rid of me that easily.”