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Aubade with Finches & New Mattress
by Erin Slaughter

 
in the story Thumbelina
feared her body so much she almost married
a mole from the ground     what bureaucracy
 
we create to keep our hearts inside
their beautiful hells     I wish for love
to be inconsequential     as an oyster unsalting itself
 
in the gulf     I chose a kind man     I bought
a new mattress     so as to no longer sleep
with bereavement’s nectar     but I don’t know
 
how to keep happiness leashed
& my fear is lawless     I want to be
a prettier vector today     to say o swim
 
in my glass chest glimmering minnow I promise
never to boil you     but dignity is a hearse
snaking the dry pines & in the riverbed
 
of summer I’m a cemetery of cypress
whittled to toothpicks     snapped off along the road
from the months-ago hurricane    Byron’s lover mailed him
 
a lock of her pubic hair with a note apologizing
coyly for the smear of blood     & I’m embarrassed
to tell my lover I believe in the machinery
 
of the universe     embarrassed to refer
out loud to anyone as my lover    what do you call the person
whose skin you can fall asleep against without feeling
 
like a drowning victim     a wet wind rolls in
to mop away the street’s magnolias     my friend asks which
pair of heels will help them demand Lake Michigan
 
into spring     I want to be good
at being      so when joy hands me
a fistful of burial     I say thank you
 
for the temporary through clenched teeth
I place my skeleton a fish-scale wafer
on the monster’s tongue     surrender to the eye
 
of the holy feared thing     at night my lover uproots my mistakes
from the bed frame      in the morning the finches
are as always     so blathering     someday I will tell him
 
the story of the fox who leapt
from the balcony ledge & why
I did not follow her

Picture
 
Erin Slaughter is editor and co-founder of The Hunger, and the author of I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. Originally from north Texas, she is pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at Florida State University. You can find her online at erin-slaughter.com.

Spring 2020
ISSN 2157-8079
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