3/28/2023 Poetry By Hilary Brown Bill Tyne CC
Entreaty Please understand, I have helped to plan my parents' funerals though they are both alive. Please understand, I was named for an orphan in a mystery and my mother said most of us become orphans anyway (I remember how she turned her face to my father’s shoulder when she told us her mother had died). Please understand, I’ve been writing my last wishes on gum wrappers Please understand, I cannot imagine when I’m the orphan of a mystery with no shoulder to turn my face to. The idea fills my throat with pennies so I turn the page on that thought. Please understand, I’ve been dropping the clues to my own death like breadcrumbs to be eaten by the birds. Please understand, I call my mother every day so she knows I’m still here and we silently go about our tasks connected. by 5G till one of us hangs up. Please understand, time pauses between us, I’m using it to disguise my insomnia. Please understand, my mother is 2000 miles away and I need a mother today. Please understand, I made her promise she would never die. Please understand, I made myself believe her. Cancer It is a family gift. We are gardens. Our bodies grow blossoms for surgeons to trim or poisons to beat back. Our skin our breasts our brains our bones our limbs. Surgeons trim our branches, deadhead our roses before we bring ourselves inside for winter. We go on. The blossoms spread their pollen through the summer. Nothing lasts forever. Hilary Brown is an award-winning poet and queer disability rights advocate in Chicago. Their chapbook, When She Woke She Was an Open Field (2017), is available from Headmistress Press. Other work can be found in Queerly, APT, The South Carolina Review, The Ocotillo Review, Still Living the Edges: a Disabled Women's Reader, and elsewhere. They have enjoyed the opportunities and education that have come with being a 2022 Zoeglossia Fellow. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
August 2024
Categories |