by Carolyn Adams
Lemon Cream
When my mother says whore
there is fear in her voice
as if incantation be broken
and true shape of changeling
revealed.
Firebox of pain,
construct of our desires,
dry towel tucked in apron,
how we arrange the board
a mirror of inner reflection.
When sweating over six burners,
spiders glowing, turning out a hundred
covers or so, an altar of flame and flesh
an intimacy, not quite fucking, between strangers,
oils and fragrances flowing through my hands.
Splitting stove wood
to find my name, shaved
feathered kindling, interior of burning,
a voice not so incendiary
as the dead name
echoing in all her words.
The ash in my mother’s voice
from all that burning she could never
admit happened,
sparks from stove pipe,
creosote catching flame,
catching crescent shine of hatchet
the arc of sharpening
buried in all our conversation.
My skin remembers the hands of a man
tracing latitude and longitude of lacerations
on my body, sealing each scar with a kiss
extracting a promise to call
if flesh begins singing of blade,
his hands of night, soft as cloud
rolling off sea, bathing us in tide.
Shadow
made form, fills the pause
Granny would end each sentence with,
another memory of whetstone,
we pour sea another cutting
we string shells another cutting,
recite the distances of rivers
gather palm fiber,
mangrove,
for the smudge pots
that conceal doubt, clouds of mosquitoes.
What we don’t burn
worked into bird’s nest
thatch of our hands
thatch of our words
there is no maternal rain
we abandon
we are abandoned
breaking shore
unspoken
wave
moon of saturation.
Peach Delphine is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast.
Carolyn Adams’ poetry and art have been published in the pages, and on the covers of Wend Poetry Journal, Steam Ticket, Apercus Quarterly, Calyx, and Kansas City Voices, among others. She has authored four chapbooks, with one being a collection of her collage art, entitled What Do You See? Select pieces of her collage art have been featured in #YourArtMoment, a program of the Beaverton Arts Council in Beaverton, OR.