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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.

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.

ISSN 2157-8079
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