Poetry by Dina Folgia

​Matthew Paul Argall CC




hand me an arrhythmia
 
there’s tickertape in my veins
 
clots dapple my bloodline, screech
lives to a halt, find ways to tie ghosts
to the backs of children

cardiologist appointments before 20, funerals
before 60, someone’s brother is chasing
gravestones again
  
nobody ever has enough time, not when
dead men clog the branches
of my family tree

check on your dad would you? don’t wait
until you see his feet sprawled
in the bathroom doorway
 
my chest pains started in middle school, icewater
moments in a linoleum sea years before
anyone ever talked to me about death

mendel has a vice grip on my aorta
a lifetime of dissecting myself from the image
of my wailing mother in a waiting room

hoping father and daughter
can wind up their tick tick tickers
and bring their heartbeats home
 
stopper up my faulty heart, cork and bottle
my years, age them like wine
at least then I know I’ll live to retire
 
hide my pulsing tributaries
don’t let me see the drop
at the end of the river
 
hook me to an EKG and tell me
everything will be okay




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Harvest Blood Blue

if you put whole black peppercorns in a jar but you don’t seal it with wax what’s the point
kitchen-spice-malefices loosed unto floors and sisters and unintended front porch parcels

I’m not much of a witch but I seal my spells twice once for maybe-magic and once for me
poultice girl bullied into back corners sticking playground goop into stark stone bowls

I once found the cure for aids when someone pushed me down on the kickball court
no really I did I pounded it out of dandelions and not-so-poison ivy and damp wood chips

thorned-chest-crying begging skinny begging brand new boots begging fairies out of thin air
no more won’t-call-it-autism or too-tan-skin just pallor and unbridled intellect like hermione 

I buy jars in bulk off amazon now and my new boots are hard steel-toed still scuffed though
but my peppercorns are suddenly yours torn from my fleece-lined pockets stuffed under corks

they roll facetious from your tonsils stick lying to saliva make burned tracks of your tongue
and I didn’t even buy them wholesale from costco no I clawed them straight from the ground

you forfeited your sugar-white amity when I begged the truth from your negligent lips 
revisited pudgy poultice girl knelt crying with her in mother earth’s deciduous down 

spiced veins are the greatest teachers they see no ugly nothing soft only veracity
hard like the soles of my wronged-child’s shoes gnarled like the bark of my fairy trees

I believe in maybe-magic like I believe in myself that is on a full moon and only when it suits me
almost-witch girl nothing-in-her-throat girl staving off snakes with prayers and peppercorns

the great bitch-banishers     great tongue-tiers     my last-ditch efforts sealed in a bottle

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Dina Folgia is an MFA candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University. She was an honorable mention for the 2021 Penrose Poetry Prize, and a 2020 AWP Intro Journals Project nominee. Her work appears (or will be appearing) in Ninth Letter, Dunes Review, Stonecoast Review, Defunkt Magazine, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, and others. She is a poetry editor for Storm Cellar. Keep up with her work at https://dinafolgia.com/
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