With aged and trembling hands
No grip to grasp the spoon,
She bunched up cornbread and beans
Into a mound
Lifted to her mouth
Like laboring up a ladder
Pressed into her mouth—
Overflowed crumbs
Drifted onto her nursing home plate.
“Old People has a hard time a-eatin'”
Mamaw said.
No offer to help
Came from me.
Mamaw had this old, oak table
Full of worn spots from warm plates and bowls
A coffee ring at the end of the table where papaw used to sit
That table always smelt clean
Like fresh peonies and laundry
Anytime she’d make her chicken and dumplins
After being stripped of it’s old linen tablecloth
Mamaw would wash that table with a warm, soapy cloth
Before dusting it with King Arthur flour
Little clouds bursting from the surface
As the sprinkling hit against the old wood
I, hidden under the table watching
As snowy flour dissipated into the kitchen air
She could hear my giggles
I could smell the chicken cooking on the stove
The holy trinity of flavors
The rawness of dough stinging my nose
She picked me up to sit upon that table
We patted flour between our hands
More clouds
More giggles
She rolled out her dough
And began to cut long strips
Like the same long lines from her tablecloth
Cutting smaller pieces
Little chunks of sticky dough upon her table
She would roll those pieces
In the palms of her weathered and wrinkled hands
Those same hands cupping mine
My smile extending up to my eyes
As I made my first dumplin’
She dotted my nose with a floury finger
And smiled back at me
“Good job, my sweet baby”
Tiptoes on the step stool
I’d watch her gently slide
Each dumplin into the pot
“Not too close, baby, you don’t want to get burned”
After it all came together
We would wait
The house filled with the warmth
And smells of our supper
Placing me back on the table
I would take a warm, soapy cloth
And wash away our mounds of floury snow
The remenants of our day
She would reach me one side of the linen cloth
And we would gently place it back
Preparing the table for supper
Off white bowls with a navy stripe
Mismatched metal spoons
I always got the smallest
Later in the evening
The whole family communing together
Me sitting right beside Mamaw
My own bowl filled full
This memory
One of my fondest
I make them to this day
Flour on my own table
Mamaw now mingled in the puffs of flour
Like a happy ghost
Still giding me
As I make her chicken and dumplins
A tickle of whimsy visits me
in the middle of a scuffle
with a particularly stubborn writer’s block;
its intention is not to help.
The mantis is tiny, could sit on a dime.
It fits on my fingernail
and I bite those!
(I know, I’m trying to stop)
Never knew they could come so small
but I guess any infantile insect
would be (should be!) miniature.
I can’t help but let it crawl on me.
A fast little bugger, the mantis claws
for every new finger I give it,
before it stops to stare at me,
naturally curious, trying to figure me out.
Then the swaying starts, little side lunges
back and forth until it begins running again,
setting the steps of our intriguing dance:
scurry, stop, stare, sway, scurry.
Crypsis, I would later learn.
The sway is an attempt at camouflage,
tricking predators into thinking
nothing was ever there in the first place.
As if I could ever hurt you, little mantis!
I may be unfathomably bigger and able
to crush without any resistance,
but I am just as fragile as you.
It doesn’t take much to brush
either of us to the ground.
Someday I’ll get to the source of my weakness,
an agony buried deep deep.
Today, you are my latest theophanic joy,
a promise of peace to help balance the coming days
and I will never deny myself
any reason to put forth a smile.
You may be small and powerless now,
but that seems almost of no concern
as you inevitably scamper on to whatever next thing.
I see no reason why I can’t do the same.
I’ve been done for ten minutes
I don’t see why they give us an hour for thirty minutes of work
We’re all done now
Well, not all of us
Three rows behind me I can hear the frantic scribbling of a pen
So either he’s still writing
Or he’s angrily scratching out all the blank space on the last page
Seems odd, but we all cope with boredom differently
Half of the students are staring at the wall
Most of them have blank expressions
They might be sleeping with their eyes open
A few of them, my closest friends
Seem to be mouthing a song
Judgjng by our anxious conversations this morning
They seem to be measuring the time in reps of All Too Well (10 Minute Version)[Taylor’s Verison][From The Vault]
I see a kid behind them tattooing his arm with a pen with black or dark blue ink
There’s a kid in the corner crying
He must’ve been caught off guard by a DBQ about Haiti in a European history exam
All the girls with long hair, including me, are braiding sections of their hair
It doesn’t look good, but at least it occupies our hands
As for me
The blank pages at the end of my open response question booklet are no longer blank
They’re littered with intricate doodles of whatever my eye lands on
Filling the space around the drawings are song lyrics and poems
I wish I could take this home with me
It looks really cool
Finally the timer beeps
They collect our sealed tests and threaten us about disclosing details of our test
Finally they dismiss us
Twenty-three ravenous students trample each other racing towards the lunch room
And as soon as we sit down, we begin talking about the test
Bite down on me.
Was sipping on something real sweet.
Jittery on past thought,
I think you are following me.
Rolling in fire,
doesn’t make me a liar.
I’ve still got some hair on my feet.
Monster tumbler,
bite down on me.
Was sipping on something
real sweet,
so sweet.
Prey eat prey,
aint no predator to me.
Hiding in the backseat,
just wait til you try to get me.
Fighting on caffeine and pixie,
you’ll see,
I got chi on my side and candy.
Monster tumbler,
as wild as me.
Then, when ready,
say hello
the wait has been fervent
his hold curls into my upper arms
his fingertips trap my body against my heart
this man with mechanical hands starts
a slow mission for my stuttering art
he steps into my enigma and sees himself
he knows nothing of how i study
his pinecones, pink shirts, deck hands, his
pinky finger that pulls each star from my mouth
i am afraid to go out of my house
i have been singing songs that sound like him
i have been passing them to the band like secrets
i have been adoring the negative space around his shoes
i have loved him without knowing him
his personal military reporter, i embed myself,
so, when he falls back, his mind can always be
safe and sound in both of our laps
he fills himself with right angles, approval, levity…
some of his thoughts are knives against my neck,
try to dictate the beat of my own breath
he takes me to the bottom of the sea,
swarms the ocean with his rolling chest,
pries our oldest ages off like an oyster shell,
pulls submerged pearls from his throat
and holds them in his mouth like teeth
i touch and dream
i sit in his bends like a knee joint
along a ledge, i still the air so he can sleep…
swells of rivers fall silent, a sun
rises above his head while he is under
the power of his own strategies,
starfish swoop swiftly through
the blue-black hair of his youth
the space we hold gives us strength
we did what we had to do
we wagered our existence in two
Without permission
they jump into my garden
and strangle my legs.
