Girl with Death Mask by Jennifer Givhan

Author:Jennifer Givhan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2018-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Avra

There are stars I lay down

my body turning

animalia & by that

I mean alcoholic

A woman floats from a staircase

dangling needle & thread

just out of reach

& buttons my ears

my eyes I mean to feel

frightened but haven’t

the heart so I

thank her & she hands me

a child

The child laughs

then dies in the strings

of my arms

This is not yet

ghost story but prelude

for how I became both

living & dead

& it saddens me

I dip butter-yellow

wafers into milk

feed them to no one

The woman returns

offers me a zipper

as a promise

to take care of me

& it’s rude not to accept promises

I zip my mouth

like a winter coat

the stars have turned to icefields

my hands to bees

Whatever sky

exists does so with snowflakes

& that thought’s not as bleak

as what might’ve happened

had the child lived

one nursery-rhymed morning

its plaything turned Mother

like a stuffed hippo

for holding in bed

The trade-off of losing anyone

is love on either side

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