Monsoon Laura
by Claire Skinner
To walk with him into the city and watch the sweat come off of him in rivulets like how she
imagines God would reveal himself
as saltwater on a forearm, as saltwater on the brow
and, even if it wasn’t God, Laura would still place her palm on the small of his back
to feel the dampness there
*
Before Franky left town for good, he picked her up and they drove to the Kingfisher. They sat at the
bar. Laura remembers. She ate the green and salty olives off the wooden pick. She drank until she
was a body. The mood she wanted was called “river.”
Once, when Laura was small, she sat in a canoe with a boy.
His mom owned all the Wendy’s in town.
He pierced a worm on the hook and threw the line
into the brown water. Laura asked him if he worried about the fish,
how it would feel when the hook caught its throat. No, the boy said,
he didn’t worry about that. What he wanted was to feel
the tug, to take the live, wet thing and show it to her.
*
In one picture of Laura, she wears a man’s coat. It’s red, with fur lining. Too big. Her left breast is
exposed. Whose coat is that? She is standing in front of a laurel tree. It’s dusk. Or it’s dawn and
she’s been up all night. Laura is gazing at something outside the frame.
*
In her dream, Franky’s the stag.
and she’s the hunter. Don’t
listen to the people who say
he was the one who hunted
her. The day Laura was born
she started looking.
imagines God would reveal himself
as saltwater on a forearm, as saltwater on the brow
and, even if it wasn’t God, Laura would still place her palm on the small of his back
to feel the dampness there
*
Before Franky left town for good, he picked her up and they drove to the Kingfisher. They sat at the
bar. Laura remembers. She ate the green and salty olives off the wooden pick. She drank until she
was a body. The mood she wanted was called “river.”
Once, when Laura was small, she sat in a canoe with a boy.
His mom owned all the Wendy’s in town.
He pierced a worm on the hook and threw the line
into the brown water. Laura asked him if he worried about the fish,
how it would feel when the hook caught its throat. No, the boy said,
he didn’t worry about that. What he wanted was to feel
the tug, to take the live, wet thing and show it to her.
*
In one picture of Laura, she wears a man’s coat. It’s red, with fur lining. Too big. Her left breast is
exposed. Whose coat is that? She is standing in front of a laurel tree. It’s dusk. Or it’s dawn and
she’s been up all night. Laura is gazing at something outside the frame.
*
In her dream, Franky’s the stag.
and she’s the hunter. Don’t
listen to the people who say
he was the one who hunted
her. The day Laura was born
she started looking.
Claire Skinner is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and was a Zell Postgraduate Fellow in creative writing. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner and The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (University of Arizona Press, 2016). She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with a husband, a cat, and lots of leggy plants.