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Bethany Frenette |
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The Forgotten Mother Her hunger is red as an oven-- they think of baking bread, hotmitts needed to touch her, cloth that separates flesh and heat and the open wound of her belly-- they forget they cut her there, how her word covered oceans. All the gold of Cortés flashed through her veins. She is not the Virgin, and she is no traitor. She can dance with jade, feathers, her arms know the distance between land and ships. Mary is pale under her star. Fire crawls up the blank plains of her thighs, her coiled hair, the wheat of her skin, her free unruly hips-- And she survives. Her only betrayal. She remembers all this. If you ask, she will tell you why the earth eats the dead, why they have to forget. Still Life An apricot's on the windowsill-- See the leaf? The sweet round belly swelling toward the glass; We could make marmalade or poison to kill the last memory of the name your mouth swallows as you unbutton my dress. Or peel it with the knife you left on the counter when you came home late and made your own dinner. But I'll let it stay for now, until the sun rears up, and bakes the skin to the window. Then ask you to remove it just to see if it tears. [Index] |
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Thunder Sandwich #26 - Summer/Fall 2005 |
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