Poetry by Christina Thatcher

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Protect the Child 


Before I was old enough for funerals,
                our rabbits died. The first drowned 
                deep in a bucket, learning to swim. 
                The second got so slow her brain 
                was eaten by rats, her opened skull 
                still steaming when I found her. 

Before I was old enough for funerals,
                I heard Uncle Billy had bled out, 
                died heroin blue in a hotel room, 
                his body leaking for days. Mom said 
                he deserved it for killing her crow. 
                He never was a good brother. 

Before I was old enough for funerals,
                I walked in on my grandmother’s gasp
                for air, the pastor dripping red wax 
                on her forehead. I screamed, 
                clutched his robe before my mother
                pulled me downstairs, grabbed me 
                hard by the cheeks, and said: 
                there are no tears in this house, no tears.

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​Bad Things

          after Ellen Bass


You are going to lie to the women you love:
one with a bow purse and lop-eared bunny,
one with stomach scars and wrist tattoos,
both whose fathers died, like ours. 

You are going to learn to drink, slowly, 
until vodka no longer burns, until 
after six shots, you can still drive through 
deer-filled Durham streets. 

You are going to pass out 
on the tar thrower, methadone 
nursing your bones until you’re too weak 
to lay cement. Jobs will stop calling you. 

You are going to lose your phone, 
therapist, house, women, and all the while 
you will write to me to say I’m okay, 
I’m okay, tell me you still have somewhere 

warm to stay, but I’ll know you are driving 
to the city in a car that will run out of gas 
and then – into the addicts who all the bad 
things happen to – you will disappear. 

Christina Thatcher is a Creative Writing Lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She keeps busy off campus too as the Poetry Editor for The Cardiff Review, a tutor for The Poetry School, a member of the Literature Wales Management Board and as a freelance workshop facilitator across the UK. Her poetry and short stories have featured in over 40 publications including The London Magazine, Planet Magazine, The Interpreter’s House and more. Her first collection, More than you were, was shortlisted in Bare Fiction's Debut Poetry Collection Competition in 2015 and published by Parthian Books in 2017. Her second collection, How To Carry Fire, is forthcoming with Parthian Books in 2020. To learn more about Christina’s work please visit her website: christinathatcher.com or follow her on Twitter @writetoempower.  

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