Jennifer Givhan
The Demon
Hands at each bedpost, grasping the head
of the bed, jerking, ripping hard
the sleeper from sleep. This is not a dream.
Morning noises resume
from the window, three brave rabbits
offering themselves to a hungry black snake.
A child once begged the truth
of her mama. That child understood
more than her keep, more than her share
of the household burden, a roof lifting like a lid
on a boiling pot, a room that means
to hold us in as much as out—
a kitchen for consuming
or being consumed. In this room
pure appetite mimics memory, its sinewy shadows—
& the child must grow up.
She knows her mama's hands
are her own, shaking.
Birthright Disguise
I dreamt a woman with my mother's
crow-black hair and eyes
was unzipping a feathered demon suit
prickling at the neck
skin beneath the scales or gills
my own beige, plain and scarred—
the woman was me, I know. I could hear
her screaming, but I couldn't tell
how sticky the demon had grown.
When I startled awake as often is the case
each time I'm frighteningly close
to understanding what happened those years
I cannot remember, thrown away
like the girlhood and teenage diaries
I burnt when I got married—a fresh start
I'd said, although now I'm certain
that was a lie…
my daughter in her footy
pajamas stood at the bed's steep edge
watching me sleep. Or was she trying
to wake me—to pull off the dark sleep
suit? I panicked. I jumped. Her eyes
shot owl wide.
The simpler story would end
with me, plucking from the pillows and
my hair, feathers—choking back
mouthfuls of scabs.
Instead, I had to ask her.
I had to. Baby, let me see. Open your mouth.
Night Cropping
Mama's suffering climbs from bed,
switches on a light and sets the kettle hissing;
against the windowpane the compassed face of moon
arcs, an owl's egg fallen to a thicket
switched on by light inside its kettle, hissing
as she peels back memory through its freckled shell
arced as the owl's egg fallen in her thicket
(from birdlimed branches, a silent copse).
While she peels back memory, a freckled shell
crackles, the way hunters set traps:
birdlime, branches. Her silence copses
guilt, new growth one might hope will green
instead crackles—a hunter setting traps
in her mind, a burrowing owl come to claim her young
guilt, new growth one might fear will green
but crops up brown, disc-faced, howling. I am Mama's daughter
& in my mind, a burrowing owl comes to claim my young
against the windowpane's encompassing moon
but crops up brown, disc-faced, howling I am Mama's daughter &
Mama's suffering, climbing from bed.
The Daughter's Curse
For ruining your body, the bruised
pear you become each night
beneath sheets
—selfsame animal since girlhood bloomed
thick as shaving cream on your legs, savage
as spilled sugar water on the kitchen tile
between crevices—
teeth meant for lacerating mattress-
beaten thoughts, for other
than this. Say the damn thing.
Let down
like milk like memory from your blood. Curse
me with what you cannot give & keep giving
& I keep taking.
Resfeber (Re-Membering Trauma)
: The nervous feeling before undertaking a journey; the restless race of a
traveler's heart before the journey begins
~
Admit your loss. What you are hunting tempers
underground—it's fool's gold
in the mining towns. The subconscious
is a shaft of broken tamarack for the graves
of miners. Be something the cage unlocks, monstrous
horizon. Hunt for X in the flumes
you've named salvation. Imagination is an act
of self-preservation. What tastes blue hot, is tough to catch
& impossible to open? Struggle. Try saving
anything save yourself. You were a child once. You read
Bradbury in the sluicing heat & the trumpet flowers
regaling the open fields. The subconscious is a dog.
~
Hello, I am lost. Which way to escape this heat, this
plunging? I clipped the ladder below
sea level, foam-green & barnacled. Lost
hot deflowering light. Or cave-
dwelling calypso, hello! I am the open-
hearted end of a fool. The hunting dogs have lost
their trail. They're roiling in flowerbeds
& muddying your best hopes.
What's lost to your earth? They've buried.
Traveling with Leonora Carrington
Mexican surrealist, 1917-2011
I'm going insane, Leonora.
Do you believe that I was with you
when you flashed the priest? I helped
lift your skirt above your head.
I was the space between your bellybutton
and your thighs, the salmon pink
shock of girlflesh crossing
past with present confessionals.
Because art is a portal
from this misplaced time of marigolds
draping the altars of our skins, the veil
thinnest between us and our hallucinatory
dead, we must own our souls
or let our souls own us, but to give
them away would mean certain
asylum, brickworld silence.
If imagination is the passport
to liberation, if you never blamed
me as I blame myself, if you never
guiltpinnned me in a pair of mothwings,
lend me a yellow lifejacket
and let us go then. As a child you opened
Max's book and said I know this. Did you hear
me there, too? Was I thrumming?
Artist, I'm coming to you
through the halflight dreams awake
since we cannot choose each night
what funerals we attend, what treeroots
shoot into the freshly soiled
bodies of our dearest lovely friends,
what stickshards our selves
become, what earthworms we've been.