First Born

Oh, how I’ve wanted you.
How I scrubbed my shoulders
in the brook for you, nibbled

the cheddar crumbs, wove cabins
for the birds from flax and twine.
How I stripped myself clean

of any safflower, any knapweed.
How I salted the oleander.
How I braided the bread.

Little seed of a seed of a thought
sweet enough to pucker. Little hands
cupped for rain. Little promised thing,

little wish spoken into lamplight
before it goes out. Tell me you can
still teach yourself to burrow

into the warmth of me, dam up
my womb with your pillow, geranium
the dark into something heavy.

Show me any witch in any wood
and I will shake her hand, will make
any deal for you, for a headful of hair

to brush lice from with a thin-toothed comb,
to whisper bedtime stories against,
to wash with lavender and thyme.

I want. I want and I want and I bleed
persimmons, enough to flood
the manor house, enough to crawl

into my mouth in sleep
and tug the faith from me, yarn
by impossible yarn. Little one

thing I cannot give up. Little swan
that comes to my breakfast window,
grey and frightened, little omen

I crochet one continuous blanket
for, until the rooms are webbed
in pastels, pastel and pearls and still,
not an echo of you.

The Woman Who Ate Small, Smooth Stones and Wept Alone at the Edge of the Forest, Wearing a Nightgown of Crowskin

I dreamed my daughter drowning.

Death with our eyes open. Death with our eyes closed.

Waxwing-faced sisters, tell us the month,
the year. Tell us we deserve a landslide

to turn us earthen again. Tell us how
frogs die before they know they are dead.

I once thought motherhood would be
cutting off a hand, sprinkling teaspoons of dirt
on top, watering it with our blood, our dirty fish,
our pearl tears, our phenomena.

I was trying to scream. I kept trying to scream.

Do not forget the mad woman in the hills,
watching a man watch highland cows.
There’s three moths in her pocket,
waiting to be released to dust.

Let me anoint your forehead
with rose water, ghost daughter, yet to be born.
Let me pluck your name from out the thistles.
Let me reach into the well and snag your fingers

and close my palm around yours, blood
to blood, as unreal as any shadow

braiding and unbraiding itself.

____

Mary Simmons is a queer writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her poetry MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she also served as the Managing Editor for Mid-American Review. She has work in or forthcoming from The Baltimore Review, trampset, Moon City Review, One Art, Beaver Magazine, Yalobusha Review, and others.