What Hurts Going Down by Nancy Lee

Author:Nancy Lee [Lee, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2020-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

iii.

Did they even want daughters?

Sons so adored, rut-hungry, bottle-weak,

sloppy work with a scythe. Who didn’t

know his charm, the lanolin musk

of his wool? And what if all daughters

turned to ghosts? Whale bone, sadness,

smoke. Tell them, it was kill or be

killed. Tell them, we shivered for days

beside their cribs, then stood

to answer our own prayers.

PASTORAL

a quilt feather twisting in moted light

a panicked dog chained in the bed

of his truck radio squawking AM

the smell of fresh paint and turpentine

his saliva on the rim of my juice glass

the newspaper story of a man crushed

in a hippo’s jaw and the farmer gobbled

by his own prized hog trampled

cornflowers outside my bedroom sill

the milk boiled down to burnt skin

in the pan a trick with a doll and three

pieces of string and a chair jammed

under a broken doorknob a branch forced

through an unoiled keyhole the preacher

on the dais in his satin-stitched stole saying

today thank your parents for punishing you

you who are filthiest with sin

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.