Page 42 - WTP VOl. XII #1

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My grave severe ancestors risked so much to leave Ireland,
expected so little
The speckled fringed vulva I now afford water
with its green orchid stem parts thighs of air
Dry Dock
from The Devil’s Fools
That autumn afternoon
I brought the world into her room —a tall and rustly spike—
the pale girl in the other bed knew the past no more than I did after three days in a dorm
Unpacking, part of me discarded the nametag sewn in each collar and the major I had declared
Toy gun sales and skirt lengths my teen editorials, mercurial men brokered genocide
I would lick the stamp on a blotter, learn tuition and fees were funding new ways to rain napalm
A dusky boy had me joy in six coffees with milk as we sat overlooking a lake
The main—barnacles, bounding: yellow-green ooze
flaking and gouged
Dotted and dashed; scrap and fragment: the hill steep, lumpy
Rank weed, brittle spire; prized bloom, softened o’keefe
Hull raised, bilge pumped, underside steady
That day yellow dock raised my soul —the stalk ending in burnt-orange furls tapped on my boot as I walked—
the Coke bottle’s thick green glass propped nature’s spear on my desk as I studied beyond the derivative
Mary GillilanD