Two Poems
AJ Oxenford Long-Awaited Escape If it were a flower, I’d describe its coloring as beautiful-- boysenberry center graduated to eggplant, outlined in vanilla, edged in fawn-- but it’s the bruise centered on my chest big as a softball. No, big as the size of his fist. He stole every breath. I tried to get each one back, but his fist hit my face. An index finger to his lips, blood from my nose staining his hand. “Shh,” he whispered. He’d proposed at the zoo in front of the penguins, three years before my first black eye. He said to me, on bended knee, he’d love me until my heart stopped. How I Stopped the Fighting My father’s voice bellowed out the screen porch door, past our cows grazing on patchy meadow grass and through the maple trees of Fothergill’s grove. He hollered at Mom–they fought constant as the trains that traveled the tracks just beyond our acreage. The trains didn’t stop on account of Sundays, and neither did they. They never fought with fists, only careless words and hurtful silence. I hustled my baby sister outside, dared her to cartwheel down the rickety porch steps. I never thought she would try. They stopped yelling when she screamed, Father’s boots loud on the hardwood floor. Jagged bone split through flesh of her shin. Father scooped her off the sidewalk and sprinted to the car. In the backseat with my sister, Mom whispered prayers. Father reached his bloodied hand back to touch Mom’s knee; I cupped my hands over my face, and smiled. |
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About the Author: AJ Oxenford lives in West Des Moines, Iowa, where she teaches at a local college; she also owns a business with her husband where they take down barns and make furniture. She loves the Iowa Hawkeyes, reading mystery novels, and cat naps (with her cats).