Obviously, This Dreams Means I’m a Bad Mother

It rains and rains and rains.

Bodies and tea pots, couches and beds, hammers and dishes

 

washing up in town. When it stops, I’m busy drying out,

busy shoveling out, busy salvaging what I can. So busy

 

I don’t notice, at first, my kids’ long absences from home.

I think they’re afraid to stay indoors, afraid they’ll again

 

be trapped by water, that they don’t want to linger in a house

where so much was lost. Books, games, stuffed lovies,

 

the dog, two cats—all gone, swept away by flood waters.

I follow the kids down the dirt road, across the bridge,

 

up the ravine still muddy from the storms. I can’t see them,

but their voices carry through the woods. They stop in a clearing

 

and I creep across a felled tree, drop to my knees and crawl

closer and closer to peek through the leaves. The children

 

are circled around a stump, focused on a green mossy nest

of miniature babies, maybe four or five of them,

 

three-inch wriggling squeaking tiny human beings swaddled

in torn bits of blankets from our linen closet. My kids

 

are holding and shushing and rocking. I feel dizzy, afraid

they’ll see me, afraid they’ll turn to me for help, afraid

 

they’ll ask to keep them, and I stumble back over the log

and I run, and I run, and I run.

 

Victoria Melekian

Victoria Melekian lives in Carlsbad, California. Her stories and poems have been published in print and online anthologies. She’s twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. For more, visit her website: https://victoriamelekian.com

Cyn Kitchen

Blind in One Eye, Can’t See Out of the Other

according to her story / a woman, blind in one eye / didn’t tell her parents / she couldn’t see / until she was twelve. / Horrifying, but / she made it funny / and tragic because / obviously. / Got me thinking / what I’d kept quiet / not as cool as a blind eye / but a good story / like Dad’s wooden leg / trophy of a motorcycle crash / one he never talked about / not even at the dinner table / us kids quiet and still / not rapt, terrified / because wrong moves went noticed / no one wanted to be guinea pig / for whatever reproach / Dad delivered that day / eyes fixed on our plates / eating dinner with his gun / to our heads. / He could have said grace / could have bared his teeth in smile / could have seen us / two good eyes and all.

 

Instructions for a Life

unfurl the gravel road as a tablecloth, a bedsheet

drifting low towards horizon, stars spiriting upward

into the gloam. tug on the string of night, open

the door of birds blown from muddy fingers

their songs like sermons, like recipes. suds

buds bulging knots on limbs, massage

into being with fingertips dipped in wine. you

are halfway there. now comes the wait

weight of it all, trucks ticking time along

the highway hauling burdens to & fro

in shutter-speed time.

 

sleep. when the breadbox of morning lifts

it’s time to water the grave, excited as you’ll be

to untangle the fathomless frog of your throat

in the cattail bog harboring fairies in the marsh.

 

Cyn Kitchen

Cyn is an Associate Professor of English at Knox College where she teaches creative writing and literature. She is the author of Ten Tongues, a collection of short stories and also writes nonfiction and poems, some of which appear in such places as Still, Fourth River, American Writers Review and Poetry South. Cyn makes her home in Forgottonia, a downstate region on the Illinois prairie.

Assessment

After “Litany” by Billy Collins

 

 

I’m a broom and its dustpan, the sharp tip

of a long knife, watermelon, cool side

 

of the pillow on a muggy night. I’m the red

squirrel scrambling up a screen door, a dandelion.

 

I’m not gingerbread or lace of any kind;

not on collars, tatted doilies. I’m not the ocean,

 

prick of a cactus, a long-stemmed glass, bottle

or carafe of red wine. I fancy myself Egyptian

 

turquoise, a Paul Klee painting—geometrics

in soft pastels, hung on a plastered wall.

 

I’ve never been whiskers on cats, gerbils.

Not an apron—clean, maybe, never smeared

 

with flour, tomato sauce, greasy anything; not

the moon, though its craters are my thoughts.

 

I would love to be, but sadly not, the sounds

of Thelonious Monk, Johnny Mathis’ croon, Barbra.

 

I am a branch scraping a tin roof, fall from

a skyscraper, never hitting ground, a ripe

 

banana turned brown overnight, coffee without

enough cream. I am, in my dreams, a queen-size

 

bed in the center of a room—impeccably made,

four crisp corners, blue cotton spread, a throw,

 

mattress firm enough to hold a life of secrets,

soft enough to burrow in, fall slowly apart.

 

Hari B Parisi

Hari B Parisi’s (formerly Hari Bhajan Khalsa) poems have been published in numerous journals and are forthcoming in Thuya Poetry Review, The Blood Pudding, Two Hawks Quarterly and Inklet. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, most recently, She Speaks to the Birds at Night While They Sleep, winner of the 2020 Tebot Bach Clockwise Chapbook Contest. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband. Website: https://haribpoet.com

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