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To Keep Away Crows Feet
I watched a dozen red wing black birds
fight over a single maggot in the church parking lot
as funeral barkers repeated the priest.
The birds smeared that crawler into a grease
to bake on the blacktop. Maggot resin
waxed their beaks. Soon I will gather fiddle head ferns
and place their fuzz on my tongue.
I thought about paving my driveway,
left it dirt instead.
I won’t reseed the lawn either.
I can smell the bog’s breath.
Thickets are not fallow.
Last winter I crept to the crawlspace
slept away four moons. When I awoke
I could only stomach tubers and a few berries.
But I wanted meat in my mouth.
Mayflies hatch and we tie bait
to match. Fingertips gaunt and sharp
from feathers and thread, a tight quilt
knit to moisten trout tongues.
Fly rod flits cast spells over swamp streams.
I do not understand trout rising in the thaw
but I damn sure know the comfort
in the underbelly of a bog.
Worms and maggots ask questions
all winter long between roots and decay.
I plug my ears with mourning dove songs.
I tilt with the earth away from the sun.
Together we burrow blindly
like voles chase winter grubs.
If we traveled like birds we’d grow fat and pretty.
My hands would soften.
I’d moisturize my crows feet and fallow heart.
At every funeral I’d say the same thing.
I’d knead spruce sap against my gums
and ask the needles to have mercy on my tongue.
Tyler Dettloff is an Anishinaabe Métis, Italian, and Irish writer, professor, musician, gardener, and water protector raised on the edge of the Delirium Wilderness. He currently lives in Gnoozhekaaning (Bay Mills, Michigan) and teaches College Composition at Lake Superior State University. He has earned a B.S. in English and a dual track M.A. in Literature and Pedagogy from Northern Michigan University. His work has been featured in Voice on the Water, Crab Fat Magazine, and Heartwood Literature Magazine. Mostly, he enjoys walking along rivers with his wife Daraka and through swamps his dogs Banjo and Fiddle.
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rest here
i always approach
the person in the
room who holds
the least power
and turn my
hands into a cup
and listen to them
& try to hear
and turn my head
at an angle and
turn my shoulders
down and my
sternum inward &
try to bow
and turn my nose
into a swamp & try
a silence
and turn my cheeks
into a great plain &
try to lift
and turn my
forehead into a
contemplative
landing pad for
hands & fingers
rest here
and turn my eyes
into still waters
and turn my mouth
into a brace
a carriage
i care
i care
Zoe Canner’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in SUSAN / The Journal, Naugatuck River Review, The Laurel Review, Arcturus of the Chicago Review of Books, Storm Cellar, Maudlin House, Occulum, Pouch, Indolent Books’ What Rough Beast, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.
Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.
Pretty in a Hard Way
The ground moves with snakes,
and the sky bleeds red streaks,
as if the night couldn’t leave
without a fight, and all your dreams
are tragedies where no one dies,
but everyone suffers. In your past
life when you woke up hungover, you’d
think, Anything is better than this.
You were a confection, a little
dead around the eyes, the kind
of woman people describe as
pretty in a hard way. And you
refuse to go gently into that good
night. And let’s face it. Not all
of them were good ones. You don’t
care. There is nothing you can do
about it now. Gather the pieces
as best you can even if they cut you.
Michelle Brooks has published a collection of poetry, Make Yourself Small, (Backwaters Press), and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, (Storylandia Press). Her poetry collection, Flamethrower, will be published by Latte Press in 2019. A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit.
This Body Will Not Carry
I go on long drives–childless–
a loud peace. An empty backseat,
ignoring seatbelts & airbags. No bodies
traveling at the same speed as mine.
No questions about the sky–why the clouds hang
low & heavy some days. No one to count the broken
white lines or ask why the roads light up
at dark. I drive until I see barren
landscapes–hurricanes won’t touch
this wasteland.
Annie Elizabeth Cigic is a poetry MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University. She teaches first-year writing and plans to pursue a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition to study how to merge creative thinking and pedagogy together. She is currently working on a poetry chapbook.
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Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.
Somnambulist
The pills knock you out, so you’re asleep when I make the rounds. That’s good. Easier. You hate that I still do this. I got into the habit when you were pregnant. It was prayer back then, pausing in each room, murmuring, “Thank you” and meaning it. Every night. Sixteen years.
So, I make the rounds, even now. Stand in the kitchen, where he picked up your love of cooking. The living room, where every Wednesday was Family Game Night, even when he got busy in high school. Our bedroom, where you fell asleep so easily, curled in contentment. The little sunroom where I pretended I was a novelist and he pretended he was a songwriter. His bedroom, where he evolved like the history of man, from neanderthal toddler to cro-magnon tween to a sometimes surly, often fine homo sapiens.
So every night I make the rounds, pause at each station, but without “Thank you” now, those clasped words slammed apart as easily as the Honda slammed through the guard rail, our boy asleep at the wheel. He just fell asleep. That’s all. Why is that the one detail I can’t accept?
The first few weeks, it hurt you, that I kept making the rounds. Your husband became a somnambulist and all you could do was sleep. I envy your hibernation. You’ll survive this long winter and wake in some unseeable spring. Meanwhile I go through the motions. I feel unmoored even from my grief. I kneel in the surf of the shag carpet; I’ve been in a shipwreck, a castaway washed ashore in my own home.
That annoying grandfather clock he loved chimes downstairs. As if summoned, I shuffle into the kitchen. This routine I do for you, while you sleep. I make the rounds for me, I make dinner for you. This was your sacred space with him. God, he was a chubby kid. That’s why you learned to cook. No more fast food, you said. All the diets the two of you started and quit.
I flip The No Meat Athlete Cookbook to the next recipe. I hated all his plant-based lectures. But I have to admit, he lost weight, got trim and fast. Watching him glide downcourt, stretch his body, pluck the ball from the air and finger-float it through the rim — he was more beautiful than anything in nature. A gazelle leaping is a graceful machine, but a boy doing that? That’s conscious grace. That has to be proof of something.
Tonight I’m making Loaded Spaghetti Squash, Garlicky Rosemary Potato Soup, Kale Salad with You-Won’t-Believe-It’s-Cashews Ranch Dressing, and No-Bake Mocha Cheesecake. The silvery sounds of new pans, ceramic plates, glass bowls, steel measuring cups — his birthday present from you, a complete set. Crisp cuts through squash, potatoes, kale stems; easy motions, pouring, whisking, scooping; distinct smells, garlic, rosemary, basil, bay leaves; stirring slow like cranking a gurney or prayer wheel. I lose myself in these mundane things until the flavors sweeten the air and pull me back.
It’s a feast. Center all the bowls on the white table, each filled with color: bright orange pasta, golden soup, blue-green salad, small black cheesecake with blanched almonds serrating the edges. Sometimes I notice there’s no silverware, sometimes I don’t.
It’s almost 3 AM. We haven’t sat together, husband and wife, at this table since the crash. But I end up here every night. Maybe I’m waiting for the day I’ll feel hungry again. I don’t know. It’s only been six weeks. Give it time, people say. I’ve lost thirty pounds. How do fathers do it? This is an old story, losing a son. How have all the fathers before me carried on? Why can’t I wake up?
My foot bumps something. His basketball rolls out from under the table, across the hardwood, taps against the front door. Yesterday when you went shopping, I played in the driveway, then hid the ball when you came home. I forgot to move it back to his room. You don’t like me doing anything we used to do with him. His death grated across us, leaving all these holes in our life. Everything is falling through.
It’s cold outside. Look at that moon. Almost full, almost there. I shoot a few hoops, the ball bouncing, hitting the rim, so loud in the silence I stop, waiting for someone to shout out their window. But if anyone’s awake, they keep it to themselves.
I should go back in, but the park is just down the block. I can’t see it, so I walk to the street lamp on the corner. From here, the jungle gym looks like a pile of empty cages; the trees are as still as a diorama. And all that night behind it. Somewhere out there is the basketball court where we played until, one day, he magically was better than me.
“What?” I say to the half park.
It’s so quiet, I hear water in the sewer flowing under my feet. Somewhere behind me, the freeway sounds like a river too. I feel like I’m being swept away.
“What?” I call. “What?!”
I throw the ball like I’m trying to hit something. It loops high into the dark, gone. A moment later I hear it bounce on the court, again, again, then gone.
It takes a long time, until the sky softens, but I turn around. There’s nothing to do but follow the curve of the earth back home, choke the food down the disposal, and clean the kitchen before you wake up.
Charles Duffie is a writer and designer from California. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books and Role Reboot, and will be featured in the 2019 American Story Anthology published by New Rivers Press.
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Limit
Fish guts on the Sunday paper, one of my favorites,
Herman, covered by an eye and some gills.
She tells him it’s too sharp for me but
he ignores her and hands me another sunfish.
I work it under the tail and slide it along the spine,
careful of the meat under the skin.
He guts another one and shows me the eggs; I nod
and rinse the fillet in a steel bowl.
She sees blood on my hand and protests again,
but I have learned to ignore her, too, as long
as he is with me and I am busy.
The smell is acrid for a moment but it passes,
the scent of my father’s cigar cutting through
the scales and the blood and the guts.
“Will them hogs eat the heads?”
“They’ll eat anything you throw over the fence. Don’t forget
to bring them bowls back.”
I stood by the pen and looked at them.
I hadn’t given them names yet.
I wondered if they’d ever get a chance to eat
fish heads
without me.
I threw one far over their heads
so they would go away
and then dumped the rest inside the fence.
I didn’t want to see those fish die twice.
I heard the air compressor roar to life
and went and got the hose.
Summer was a short walk
away.
David Magill, born in Kansas City, Missouri, moved to Minnesota as a young boy and grew up on a hobby farm in Afton. He has been married to his wife, Patti, for 23 years. His work has recently been published in Metonym,The Esthetic Apostle, and Cagibi.
“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.
Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $7.95.
Starting next Sunday, January 6 2019, follow this site for a new featured work of writing every week.
The Weekly Write will post a variety of poetry and prose. Each week, read our new addition and if you like it and share it, it may be featured in the 2019 Swimming with Elephants Print Anthology.
The twenty pieces with the most “likes” and “shares” get a spot in our 2019 anthology, so don’t be shy about promoting the work you like, especially if it is your own work.
If you would like to learn more about our yearly anthology, click here to check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 for the current low price of $7.95 plus free shipping through Amazon Prime. This collection features a variety of poetry from around the world and would make a great addition to any poetry lovers collection.
Tune in next Sunday and every following Sunday until October 2019, for the Weekly Write.
Swimming With Elephants Publications would like to reintroduce you to Jennifer E. Hudgens, author of Girls Who Fell in Love with War. Jennifer was born and raised in Oklahoma City. She has always danced to the beat of her own drummer, just ask her mom. Using poetry as a means of expression and survival, Jennifer lives poetry. She watches the sky the way most people watch television. Jennifer is terrified of clowns, horses, and animatronic toys. That damned Snuggle bear is secretly trying to steal souls.
Girls Who Fell in Love with War is Jennifer’s first full collection of poems. She has plans to release a couple poetry chapbooks and her first novel in 2016. Jennifer promises the novel is quite murdery. She is also working to bring more diversity and light to the amazingly talented poets in the Oklahoma Poetry Community.
Jennifer is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma with plans to teach high school students after graduation. She teaches creative writing classes for the Oklahoma City Arts Council and is a pretty rad substitute teacher.
Jen genuinely hopes you like her poems. If you don’t, that’s okay too.
Recently, she released a collection, Paloma, with Blood Pudding Press. So it goes…
You were the only one who believed me when I said what he did hurt
You were the only one who knew I was burying myself in too much fat and flux
Paloma kickstarts with 1996, a punk rock war-cry of nostalgia and a final lingering note of sadness. This, like many others in the collection, is a poem that resounds with everything oh-so-90s; but make no mistake, this is meant in the best possible way. A mixed tape soundtrack that plays like growing up, it sets the tone to whom this collection is dedicated– as much funeral dirge as it is love song for a sister and friend. The final line of the first poem rings melancholic: “Who’s gonna take care of us strays now?”
It is this echoing theme of finality, of trying to grasp the concept of loss, that carries on through the entire collection, questions of mortality and suffering scattered like the ashes of the departed, asking the question specifically in Lauren Kate is Dead: “Where the hell is this better place people are always talking about” and present in lines like:
How is it life if we aren’t suffering
Pain keeps us still {here} latched to gravity
With each poem thereafter comes a chapter of both closure and reawakening old memories; Paloma is remarkably bittersweet in the tug-of-war of saying goodbye to somebody who can no longer hear you, and Hudgens’ voice is so clear and combative against adhering to traditional standards. If nothing else, it is clear that Hudgens proves to be anything but a traditional poet; she rocks the reader’s thoughts, with gruesome details suggesting unkempt murder, encouraging one to further unravel the mayhem behind a sudden loss. Nonetheless, this proves to be a beautiful read, a true work of dedication and memory even with scattered wishes to be unseen, like that found in Bizarre Love Triangle:
You always saw me
Now
I’m trying not to be seen
And isn’t that so like loss, and how we process it? Loud as bombs, but in the quiet, in solitude, trying to process in peace, even if the death was anything but peaceful. But with this thought, I wonder at the intention of the book title: Paloma– a name that means peace, it is perhaps, with this offering, the dearly departed (because judging by Hudgens’ words, Lauren Kate was, indeed, so very dear) may be at peace, too.
Overall, as with all of our SwEP family, I can only offer heartfelt recommendations to reach out and read more of Jennifer Hudgens’ work. You can purchase her full-length title, Girls Who Fell in Love with War, published with Swimming with Elephants, on Amazon, and keep an eye on her wordpress for more news directly from the author.
The Mourning After
I don’t remember how I got home last night
I woke up hungover
Last night was a blur
Drank too much
Head still pounding I take a shower
Removing the smell of her sweet perfume
Washing away the evidence
Aspirin won’t remedy
This emptiness
This grin
I want this stench off me
Scrub off stains left by red hands
Never feel clean
This morning I don’t recognize my reflection
I’m glowing
Hope nobody notices
I don’t want to explain
What I don’t want to remember
I was watching her dance all night
I don’t even remember seeing him
She turned my way and gave me this look
The room was spinning
She grabbed my arm
Intoxicated I lost my ability to stand
I swept her off her feet like Prince Charming
I started to feel sick
She said “take me to bed,”
so of course I obliged
What happened next is so hard to remember
A nightmare I relive every time I sleep on my side
A drunken hook up at a house party
I couldn’t believe she wanted me
it all happened so fast
In the darkness
Half conscious
So wasted
Fumbling with
Bra straps
Zippers
Belt buckles
Pants pulled to my ankles
Unknown hands invading me from behind
Plucking clothes off like flower petals
She loves me, she loves me not
I wonder what makes a corpse look sexy
She looked like Sleeping Beauty
My stiff body reacts like rigor mortis
She want me to do all the work
and I’m ready for the challenge
Cold
Uninviting
Begging
She wants it so bad
Too drunk to move
Too drunk to ask…
Stop
Words muffled by the silence of ecstasy
No!
Don’t!
Stop!
“No, don’t stop!”
We slip into bliss
Blacking out
Into full body relief
He’s taken everything from me
I’m giving her all that I have
Struggling
Shhh….I hold her still
He holds me down
I make a canvas of her
Painting my passion across her hollow frame
I’m crying
She’s moaning
Muffled by pillows
She might love me….
I can hear her heart beat
This experience is out of body
Helplessness burned so hard into memory
When it’s over I feel kind of bad…
I don’t even remember her name
Assault changes everything
Women can get the wrong idea
My body is no longer mine but a possession
It was a one night stand
at the end of one of those long work weeks…
Should I have expected it?
…and some girls you’re only meant to
have incredible chemistry with once
I thought all rapes were committed
in dark alleys by strangers
I had been in a dry spell
Can I admit what happened?
She came at the perfect one…no pun intended
He punched a hole in me
I came, I saw, I conquered
A temple desecrated
A few moments of feeling loved followed by
the comforting monotony of being single again
Trying to forget.
Afraid to tell anyone for fear they will say
I asked for it
We danced a long dance
Like a physical contract
Does this “nice guy” realize
the damage he’s done?
I just hope she doesn’t bad mouth me
for not calling
Ignorance is no excuse for violation
My dignity was destroyed in a single act of dominance
Hey! That is bullshit!
He kidnapped beauty as a trophy of conquest
I never took anything! You gave it to me!
Lacerated vaginal tissue
I thought you liked it rough!
Violent examples of power
hidden under blankets of darkness.
You raped me!
Hey, I didn’t do anything wrong!
And I know what the definition of rape is.
Demeter Speaks to Persephone After Her Rape:
Daughter, the end of summer will always be a signal. You will never forget when spring was taken from your skin. Only the smokey smell of the season’s changing. The chill of the place his hands found. It is amazing how the body remembers. Like the trees after a forest fire, you will ache from a wound you place at the back of your mind. I also know what it’s like to feel empty. I can still remember the hollow absence of you in my womb. When I birthed you into the sun a girl. This was my mistake. I should have known how girls are plucked so easily from the Earth. How they are placed in vases. How their beauty is seen only as something to be owned. Even goddesses are not safe from assault. Every winter, I remember too. How we danced. How we bloomed. How I held you in my arms and whispered “sweet girl” “sweet sweet girl” You most of all should never know how the world only holds you close enough to stab you. How any day may be the day you lose your limbs. How soon enough you will face yourself in the mirror and not recognize who you are. How can I prepare you for that? When you stumble back to me with stories of how his touch reminded you of death. How every year you feel like dying. How the sunlight no longer gives you warmth. How they will make a myth out of you and he will still sit on a throne. There is a reason they call me Mother. I am good at watching the things I love suffer. Holding a place for tears is not easy but I would gladly trade your’s for my own. Anything to let go of watching the journey of my children as they stand painful in abandoned fields like stalks of withered corn. When you walked back from Hades and its darkness I made sure the sun would show you that hiding your pain from the light only kills you slowly. And I will tell you, Daughter that everything dies but it is never the end. Do not forget you are a goddess. That the sun is shining for you. Your skin is not a fruit he sunk his teeth into, it is an orchard. Your body is not a withered stem, it is a rosebush. Every year may remind you, but never forget that above all else, you were made from this Earth. You are not a victim of it. You are the fertile soil. Ready to grow. I will mourn with you. I will show them all how to bend to your pain. How they will share your grief every time you are forced back into his bed. I will plant seeds, naming each one after you, kissing them like children, letting them sleep and dream of your return. And there, in the dark, you will find yourself yourself again. Hands in the dirt, feeling the flesh of your fruitfulness not as something to be stolen, but savored. Sweet girl, you are a survivor. You were made for greater things than the Queen of Death. And you will find them here. In the Spring.
Happy Birthday
It didn’t take my mother long to comment on how quiet I am, today.
“Awfully quiet, Sar.”
“I’m a pretty quiet person,” I replied, as mildly as I could. Sometimes I am surprised she hasn’t noticed this yet, or assimilated it into her understanding of who I am as a person, in the twenty-seven years we’ve known each other.
I refocused on getting ready for our hike, making sure I had water, stretching my hips.
We started out and it was a lovely day for hiking. My mother kept plowing of onto side paths, wrong ways, and I had to redirect her a few times before I decided to walk a few paces ahead of her and my father. My me about some plants he saw on the trail that were also at the stable where they keep their horses.
“That’s fennel,” I said. “It grows wild around here, and it’s edible.” I pointed out a couple more plants I knew, an invasive species, castorbean, that was abundant in the area, before I went back to walking quietly ahead. My mother kept up a steady chatter behind me, telling the lizards how much she loved them and yelling at the truck doing construction a few hills away, across the highway.
“Get outta here, you trucks, you’re blocking my view of nature!” A Chicago native turned Californian. She was also very upset by the presence of a water drainage pipe, a property boundary sign, and some telephone cables.
We stopped to take pictures at least three times on the way up, and at about eighty percent of the way there was a lone wind cave where we stopped to rest and, of course, take more pictures. I took some of my parents, watching their dynamic through the lens. My father stoic, a trouper, as mom grabbed his hand four photos in and wrestled him gently into a more affectionate pose for photos five through eight. I even got him to smile for the last one.
My turn came; Dad and I switched places. I leaned next to Mom on the low oak branch and smiled at my dad and the camera.
“Look Gav, Sarah’s in one of her ‘I don’t like to be touched’ moods,” my mother announced as she proprietarily threw her arm over my shoulder, pulled me in and put her other hand on my closer shoulder. I allowed it, it was her birthday, and what did it cost me? I could let go of somethings and be nice, on her birthday. And then I thought we were done, I made a move to get up, but she stopped me, put her arm further up my neck and used her palm to turn my cheek so that I was facing her.
“I want to take one like this, with us looking right at each other.”
I looked her in the eyes a moment, light green, ringed in makeup. I’m sure I pulled back from the thought before I made a conscious decision.
“No, this is too much,” I said. I got up and flapped my hands at her, like that might lessen the blow. “You’re making me uncomfortable.”
She gave a heavy sigh. “Can’t say I didn’t try,” as if that was something people accuse her of often.
Say you didn’t try what, I wondered. Didn’t try to make your daughter take an awkwardly staged photo? Didn’t decide to violate someone’s boundaries even though you made it clear you were aware of them?
“All right,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Are you guys ready to go to the top?”
“Let’s just go back,” my mom said, smoking her e-cigarette and facing away from us, to the mountains.
“What?” my Dad.
“Let’s just go back. I’m good.” She repeated.
“Well,” I said, “We’re really close. Like ten minutes from the top. I’d really like to go all the way up.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll wait here.” She puffed away, still not looking at us.
“I feel like you’re being passive-aggressive,” I ventured, slightly terrified of a mountain-side blowout and the subsequent silent hike down to the car where I would be both irritated and terrified that my mother would stumble in her anger and roll off a cliff.
“No, I’ll wait here, I’m fine.” she said again.
My dad and I mentally shrugged at each other and mosied up to the top, chatting about the best path, indigenous plants, my recent trip to the Grand Canyon with a boyfriend of whom I am unsure of their approval. It was pleasant, the view was lovely, I was satisfied with the completion of the hike.
We found our way back to Mom who was sitting on a rock, blowing bubbles. She apparently always has them in her purse. Most people don’t leave the house without their keys, cellphone; my mother: bubbles.
“How was it?” She is still not looking at us.
“Pretty cool.” My father is perennially nonchalant. “Really nice view.”
“Blow some bubbles.” She hands the tube and wand to Dad.
“I’m good for now, maybe later.”
“They make you happy.”
“I’m already happy,” he says, but he blows the bubbles. Makes some jokes about them causing airplane accidents. I marvel at his patience.
We make our way back to the car, pretty uneventfully, and make our way to the beach twenty minutes away where we have planned to picnic.
We get there and it is gorgeous. I jump in the ocean before I grab a chicken leg and eat with my parents.
“I can’t believe I didn’t bring a swimsuit!” Mom exclaims.
“Go naked,” Dad says. He still has his boots on.
“I have leggings on, and a sports bra.”
“I’ve gone in in a sports bra before,” I shrugged. I am smoking at a remove now, so as not to affront my parents who have been off cigarettes for a year. Graciously neither of them comments on my bad habit.
My mother says, “Is that a dare?” She is already stripping off clothes.
I said, “No, I’m just saying it can be done. I’ll join you in a minute.”
She runs in, screaming at the cold and flailing in the shallows. I walk in after her, past the breakers, and I glide around, doing my water dance, letting the ocean buoy and cradle me. I am chilly but at peace, I watch the water ripple through my fingers. This is the happiest I’ve been all day, and I am glad my mother is in the ocean with me. I look back at her.
She is still thrashing in the break line, yelping, plowing her body into the waves. She is smacking at the water as if she can beat it down. She reminds me of a child, specifically a boy child, aggressive for no discernable reason. “These waves are attacking me!” She yells.
And suddenly I realize, this is how it is for her. In her eyes, she is always under attack, she always has to fight, and if there isn’t anything to attack she must create it. Maybe she can’t feel strong on her own, there must always be an oppressor, she is the underdog, the caboose.
And I wonder why she bothers me so much, with that victim mentality; her fibromyalgia, her little toe that moves separate of her cognitive command, the way she views cancer as an evil force reaping strong, sweet people from her life, that time she had lupus, her restless leg syndrome, her recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder and subsequent bout of mood-stabilizing drugs that did everything but and in her words, ‘were going to kill her’.
How can I be so irritated by someone who has been diagnosed with mental illness. Shouldn’t I, as much as anyone who has struggled with depression, be more loving and compassionate? Or is this just the way of it with mothers and daughters, with parents and their children? Is it one of those things I won’t understand until she is dead and buried?
I don’t know when I will know.
Prayer on the way to the grocery
by Sarah Allred
is she in there
would they let me enter
can they smell my expatriation, my absence
the reek of logic and earthy pleasures
would I dip my hand
in that confusingly municipal
basin of hallowed water and
dredge it across my body
in quarters and
would I remember to genuflect and
would I find the comfort
she gave at fourteen:
slightly left of the altar
the byzantine magdalene
not who we are supposed
to supplicate to but
the mother instead,
the mother I still crave
Michal
by Sarah Allred
I see these women
bags under their eyes
and blissfully unshowered
and I envy them
who get to pour
their love into one or
two or maybe three
finite little creatures
who haven’t had the
chance, yet, to be
terrorized by the world
As I sit here
with my flat belly
in a clean quiet house
and I remind you
to call your therapist
before it’s too late
and I listen to my boyfriend
talk about his exwife
and I remind a good friend
every time I see him
he is a good, generous man
and I call my mother
and I miss my sister
and it hurts to love
this way, this much
Hannah/6&26
I am not afraid of anything
not even a Tyrannosaurus rex
she says cheeks plump
in the yard I pick
tiny yellow flowers from
between thorns I think they
look like berries
I nod and agree
I am afraid I will never
be able to love again
she says cheeks plump
in the yard I exhale
smoke and wish I could
say anything true that would
let us feel better but
I nod and agree
Swimming with Elephants Publications would like to introduce our January 2017 Featured Writer: Sarah Allred.
Sarah Allred is a freelance writer and painter living in the small town of Lompoc, California. Inspired by the natural beauty of her surroundings and her emotional nature, Allred uses various art forms to express and process the events of her life. Her body of work, The Art of Self Preservation, was featured locally in November 2016. Allred plans to continue creating through 2017 and utilizing whatever outlets she can to distribute and show her works.
Learn more about Sarah Allred through her Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/brujitasaladita) and Instagram handle (sarah_katherin).
The three poems and two short stories included in this short preview revolve around the theme of family. Her intention in sharing these works is to let others see that perhaps their family struggles may not be unique, and that it is acceptable to go through periods of painful growth with loves ones. Like many authors, Allred seeks to share her works into the world as a means of catharsis for herself, and to create space in her writing practice for new themes and works to come through. The artwork included on this page is also Allred’s original work.
We are thrilled to have Sarah Allred as our first Featured Writer of 2017 and hope that you enjoy her work just as much as we have.
Swimming with Elephants Publications 