What’s Still Buried in a Field of Poison Ivy Above the City
by Rebekkah Leigh LaBlue
Every summer makes of me an unspoken terror—
the kind that hand-combs hair until oily and treads
bare-pawed through the gutter,
that collages iridescent beetles onto spiderwebs
and later collects the carcasses for armor—skirts
that crunch when I pull boys down in quilts
of highway larkspur. How to reach the age
where I stop saying boys? Through the years
I’ve acquired only synonyms: backpack
with broken strap, unsheathed razor clam
whirligiging at the bottom of a drawer.
What is there to show for myself but a hunger
I’ll never be sure is my own. I kept photos
of the boy who assaulted me
for three years. I don’t want to explain why—but
everyone offers their theories. I direct them
to my other body: telephone booth
clown-car crowded with warblers.
Here is a voicemail: pain isn’t real if not felt
to the roots of every archived bedpost: they say
hang from my neck an ivory doll’s hand
on a gold chain, always reaching for my collar—
my collar a bone aching relief map. Find me
where the thin air of altitude thwarts growth
of three-pronged ivy. Below sea level,
where depth kneads my language
into one of superlatives: men. Or into one that instructs
how to discern reclaim from cope
in the inflection of a magician—
like the most obvious answer involves
a mile-long, houndstooth handkerchief and
a coat sleeve. Like something good can still come
from all of this, if I just keep my eyes fixed and open.
Rebekkah Leigh LaBlue is a queer poet and ornithologist pseudo-native to Asheville, North Carolina by way of Long Island. The recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, her work can be found in Glass: A Journal of Poetry and Figure 1. She reads poetry for The Adroit Journal and holds birds in hand @rllablue.
