8/2/2023 Poetry by Brooke Mitchellminka CC
Domestic Addiction My mother asks for a glass of water. Kyle fills one for her. She asks for ice, so he reaches into the freezer, grabs three cubes with a bare hand, tosses them into the glass. A fleck of dirt floats in the water. He passes it to my mother. She gulps and gulps. He’s a fisherman. His palms cake soil and gravel to a Tupperware full of garlic-salted canned corn. Their love is a softer kind. The doting son and dependent mother. Different from my father and myself and our banter. He’s been sick, lately. Slower. Dried spit from the dogs coats our french doors and dead flies stick to yellow tape rolls above the island. My father’s spent cigarettes soak in the toilet. Yesterday my brother and mother went to the grocery store. I tried talking to him while they were gone. He stared right through me. But he’s never forgotten to leave the porch light on and a full plate in the fridge when I come home late. When he overdoses, I empty the cabinets and wash every dish in the house. Sweet Daughter Sting To kiss round glass openings, Tongue strawberry-needled. To settle my arguments with The moon and her sweet daughters. We are never addicted to What we assume we are. Our desires hang thick like air-bound doxa. I am drinking you, addicted To you. But maybe that Recognition is too easy an Answer. We buzz our veins Into wherever one finds the absence Of repercussions. Until morning Needles us awake. It all, always, comes With sweet daughter sting, hanging thick In the air, doxa, I’m addicted to Needing. Wanting. Push and pull, To alcohol glazing your lips in thin Coats only on nights when the constellations Beg us too hard to sear ourselves into their Sparkling canon. When love becomes worship, Becomes me bowing and dipping into your Body’s altar and offering nothing Of myself in return, How can I respond with anything but anger And poetry. Brooke Mitchell is a student of Creative Writing and Philosophy at Susquehanna University. Her time as Poet Laureate of Perry County informs her work helping to build the artistic community in rural Appalachia. Her recent writing can be found in the Santa Clara Review and upcoming in the New York Quarterly Review. Comments are closed.
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