Three Poems
Tessa Stevens Dig What you’ve kept buried August says the crows will speak but the sky does instead and when the words fall it’s the rain I’ve been praying for if our house had a voice it would whisper this: his secrets are hidden in the floorboards of my bones once I went searching for proof of our love and found dead rats and your ex’s body instead round up the animals tell them I’ve gone to live where the ground meets the stone on the mound behind our home the Earth’s mouth goes so deep I’m still learning what it means to dig no real talk ever came from guarding broken fences but the radio warns summer storms beckon I’ve been threatening to leave you for so long you’ve starting leaving my packed bags to dust yesterday I watched as the crows stole your flannel shirt they charred and festered, fought and feathered until all that was left were shreds I think those crows have taught me-- encapsulated in the shrining of the sun in their death squabble tones-- what jealousy truly is The Driving After your funeral I could not speak for days I would curl up on the coolest part of the hardwood floor when death came it shook me like a dream ripped my house from the roots and turned it upside down if you bury something six feet under it becomes still in time a snapshot, a photograph paling against the future of remembrance-- un-cuff me. If a fire had displaced us it was me who lit that match, it was me who set traps. The driving someone away is easy. It’s a slow unwinding technique. You must first carefully wind a music box, pour kerosene over the sleeping body, strike wood against rock and let flint work. Before I buried you I removed your skin, covered your body in salt and borax until it began to tighten. I fixed your features. Pried your cold eyes open and rearranged your mouth. This is how I want to remember you: dull, at the whim of me. Permanently released into the still moment of infinite time. Beneath the forever shade of a coffin and I will always know just where to find you. Oakland I smoke cigarettes all over Oakland and I can’t stop thinking about how dirty everything is I’ve washed my hands 36 times and it’s only 9am if my knuckles keep bleeding no one will want to touch me and I’ll be happy I scrub the dishes at a tempo that would make Adele stop singing under me floorboards are ghosts exhaling If I check to make sure the door is locked one more time the door is going to lose its hinges or I’m going to lose mine I can’t tell anymore why it matters but I still pick up the phone and dial your number every three minutes just to hang up every three rings every half an hour because there is a restlessness in the evenness of a number and I know God is taunting me to expel the holy right out of my body I’ve adapted the number 3 9 numbers, 3 rings, 90 minutes a day for 3 years and I’m only at 7 months and it’s only 9am and your voice is a broken toy whenever you answer, “hello” |
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About the Author: Tessa Stevens is an MFA dropout woefully worrying over student loans and feverishly writing poetry. She has been published in Talking River Literary Journal and currently lives in Oakland, California.