My Sister and I
by Tara Westmor
Somewhere in Dayton, Ohio, in the long
cicada hum of morning,
my life continues without me. My mother
had said to go outside
so we dragged our bodies through cornfields
and through thick
green wetlands and open prairies.
We were supposed
to get by with Black-Eyed Susans,
the butchered black eyes
of their yellow heads, dunked in the glass
jars of our heat infected
summer porch. The swaths of Blue
False Indigo dotting
river grass with shocks of glowing bright.
Sometimes, I yearn for fireflies.
I’d trade the stars for a living light, an insect dream
of incandescent yellow.
On and on and on, and screaming sex
into the hot, wet grass
of summer where we saw ourselves
swat mosquitos out of our
eyes and hiked into the woods. Asked my sister
about blow jobs and boys
and ate the snacks we brought with us.
Summers in the little pine
grove and then I was in the ravine and she
was fishing the glass
bottles out of the water out of the
cement drainage pipes.
Her hair in her face and sweat or
river water in her hair.
Like the row of long summers in Southern
Ohio, filled with promise,
possibilities like saving these glass bottles
maybe we could save
this place, ourselves. We shared a room
and I was curled into her
stories of ancient histories of somewhere else
Men from far away who built
things, obelisks, columns, stone fetched
from mountains. And in our room,
the wildflowers collected in cracked river bottles
calling out for water.
Like the city I grew inside of:
humid and too concerned
with promises to stay inside it forever.
Then there were two cities
The one I knew: river grass, Goldenrod,
Obedient Plant, a record
I could hold, that could stain our hands
green and gold and purple.
And the one that lived in our history books:
a table seated with the bodies
of famous men, the Wright Brothers,
Paul Lawrence Dunbar,
John Henry Patterson, Charles Kettering,
we knew them by their
marbleized bodies at the park,
beside the river.
And we were a part of that story too.
My sister and I climbed
the statues and hung onto their stone
backs like they were our fathers.
And our own father shouted to get down,
our knees stained
river-grass green, with swathes of yellow
petals in our hands
smeared on the too-white marble
of the men who made us
put down the flowers and carry
their folklore instead.
My sister and I, we grew into girls
who smashed
the bottles on wetted rocks by the river.
Did we know,
do we know now, what their story did
to us? Our deep and hungry
yearning to be cold-bodied,
made of stone.
cicada hum of morning,
my life continues without me. My mother
had said to go outside
so we dragged our bodies through cornfields
and through thick
green wetlands and open prairies.
We were supposed
to get by with Black-Eyed Susans,
the butchered black eyes
of their yellow heads, dunked in the glass
jars of our heat infected
summer porch. The swaths of Blue
False Indigo dotting
river grass with shocks of glowing bright.
Sometimes, I yearn for fireflies.
I’d trade the stars for a living light, an insect dream
of incandescent yellow.
On and on and on, and screaming sex
into the hot, wet grass
of summer where we saw ourselves
swat mosquitos out of our
eyes and hiked into the woods. Asked my sister
about blow jobs and boys
and ate the snacks we brought with us.
Summers in the little pine
grove and then I was in the ravine and she
was fishing the glass
bottles out of the water out of the
cement drainage pipes.
Her hair in her face and sweat or
river water in her hair.
Like the row of long summers in Southern
Ohio, filled with promise,
possibilities like saving these glass bottles
maybe we could save
this place, ourselves. We shared a room
and I was curled into her
stories of ancient histories of somewhere else
Men from far away who built
things, obelisks, columns, stone fetched
from mountains. And in our room,
the wildflowers collected in cracked river bottles
calling out for water.
Like the city I grew inside of:
humid and too concerned
with promises to stay inside it forever.
Then there were two cities
The one I knew: river grass, Goldenrod,
Obedient Plant, a record
I could hold, that could stain our hands
green and gold and purple.
And the one that lived in our history books:
a table seated with the bodies
of famous men, the Wright Brothers,
Paul Lawrence Dunbar,
John Henry Patterson, Charles Kettering,
we knew them by their
marbleized bodies at the park,
beside the river.
And we were a part of that story too.
My sister and I climbed
the statues and hung onto their stone
backs like they were our fathers.
And our own father shouted to get down,
our knees stained
river-grass green, with swathes of yellow
petals in our hands
smeared on the too-white marble
of the men who made us
put down the flowers and carry
their folklore instead.
My sister and I, we grew into girls
who smashed
the bottles on wetted rocks by the river.
Did we know,
do we know now, what their story did
to us? Our deep and hungry
yearning to be cold-bodied,
made of stone.
Tara Westmor is an anthropologist poet, raised in Dayton, Ohio. She received her MFA in poetry from New Mexico State University and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of California-Riverside. She has work published and forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, Hunger Mountain, Prairie Schooner, Arts & Letters, The Sink Review, and elsewhere.