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Colleen Michaels USA
Honorable Mention
For the sixth grade science fair
I decide to grow a spine.
It takes more work than I thought
and I have to dig around the house
scavenging from my family
what will become my vertebrae.
From my grandmother’s
sewing kit
I pocket spools of cotton thread
unraveling until they are clean bones.
While the other fair girls
build shrines to butterflies,
between these bones I sandwich
my father’s
poker chips
by drilling through the center,
of each red and white disk –
disks colored like the carnations
some girls will submerge in dyed water
to prove the inevitable blush,
a cross pollination of projects,
until all results are prom-dress pink.
To grow my spine of 24 bones,
I stack that from my father
on that from my mother’s
mother
string disk to spool with a fine filament.
The prize goes to the butterflies
but my spine hangs straight, suspended from skull,
casting an honorable shadow on the x-rays
my mother, a typist in radiology,
brought home for support.
The Pea Defends His Position
There are spiders who get
to
flush the sweet cheeks
of
hungry and idle girls
trussed by pink ribbons.
They are easy prey, palate
content with beige crocks,
weighting down tuffets
until frightened away.
I
don’t
want to work with
hooded girls who haplessly fall
for the axe or fang in drag.
I
am no big bad lady killer.
Don’t
stifle my small power
on
fools who cross bridges,
on
rubes who start to doze
after a few candied apples,
grabbers of beanstalk, vine
bower, tower length hair.
Consider the smoke and mirrors
to
throw one midnight ball.
As
applicant to irritate
an
insomniac’s
light slumber,
I
worked on the commission
of
pleasure. She hired me.
They’ll
say she was the one to bruise
and I was her green starter for a prince.
Those are just lies, thick mattresses.
She remembers my tender skin like spring.
Credit: appears in Modern
Grimmoire: A Contemporary Anthology
of Fairy Tales, Fables and
Folklore (Indigo Ink Press, 2012)
---
We Are All Small Boats Floating Inward
As
fragile as it seems,
make the boat of paper.
You know it might be done for,
up
against more than you can imagine.
But go ahead - origami, birch bark canoe -
crease as suits the cut of your jib.
Send it out on one agreeable bobbing wave.
Give it to the spitting wind in storm season.
Turn away or look. But return quickly,
before lightening lowers the boom
or
charges the scene in flattering light,
back through scrub pine, back home,
back to where you build your small craft.
---
Ursa Minor
In Boston a father would rather
a son be a bear trapper
or
better yet a bear.
All claws and growl,
a
ferocious boy
playing hockey and mauling.
But Bobby, my first affection,
was less Bruin, more teddy,
scared of the hockey rink
his polar fumble on hard ice.
He
was to me a singular star.
A
champion sweatshirt
over knuckle paw,
nose always cold,
I
wanted to give him my gamey girl heat
my
leg warmers, my thick winter coat,
feed him with food from trees and picnic baskets.
The waiting for ice time early Saturday mornings
by
grizzlies who hibernate in idling pick-ups,
mark their territory, leave a stale scent,
and deny all relation to constellations.
I
think of how Bobby’s
father bought him
all that equipment to bulk him up before the season -
suspenders, padded pants, steel blades, a mouth guard, a cup
and sent him out to the frozen tundra, open hunting
for bears who have no knowledge of the wild.
Bears pink and new and scared of other bears.
Bears with the eyes of dears before cars.
Bears whose padded bodies hang on the bones
of
a much smaller animal,
raised by Boston fathers, original carnivores,
who yell from the den to toughen their young.
Credit: first published in Constellations:
A Journal of Poetry and Fiction (Vol.
II, Fall 2012)
---
Six over Nine,
Felton House Bedroom Window, 1650
My
sister has received new silk ribbons.
I’ve
been learning to braid, to separate
the plaits of hair and pin them side to side.
At
night I feel the chords within the bed,
eyelets sewn with enough rope to make a nest.
My
sister sleeps next to me. She is teaching
me
to read the stars and smell when apples
are ready to be picked, a blush across
a
honeycrisp in a September orchard.
I
am not yet strong enough to lift the crate,
open the latch, lower our apples,
and stack them floor to ceiling under the barn
for mulling at Christmas.
My
sister, Amy, tucked in tight says,
Pick just one and call it your own.
But I can only see the apples as stars,
find constellations in orchard. I want
every story – Orion,
Ursa Minor, The Three Sisters.
With our napes and ankles aligned in sister sleep,
I
try to only whisper in our bed on frost nights
but my voice leaves evidence on the windowpane.
I want to be greedy at harvest, store nothing
under the barn. I want to eat to the core,
chew seed and the star beds that held seeds.
At
night, I loosen the ropes of the bed
sway and roll like clouds over moon,
like an apple free on the ground.
© Copyright, 2014,
Colleen Michaels. |
