7/17/2018 Poetry By Kimberly Ann PriestA Reflection on Pathos Rabbits circle near our raspberry bushes searching for something to eat. My son reaches to brush his baby fingers over their backs and ears-- they freeze, startle, escape, the grass waving behind them like a soft crop of hair, a landscape so unmolested—perfect. Some say he looks like his father. I think he looks like me, every mite and particle; his thick brows and bold jaw demanding attention, but not the sort that most sons do. I taught him to be mine, to remember the consequence of matriphagy, how Eve guided mothers toward the importance of sons-- to let them consume, protect their fragile egos after ritual offering. And how this pathos favors touch. Silence in our most holy texts replaced with and he went to her and comforted her. Coping. Sex. Cain begotten in a shed behind the house where the tools for gardening are kept. When not in paradise, reads the sign above the door—an unfinished phrase. If only we knew beforehand what would come of our longings for Eden. What damage we would make. My son, a shadow of some image stumbling away from me. I pull his infant body to my body, cut his waist into my hip, point toward the bushes. He follows my reach with his eyes, observes the rabbits searching for insects in the grass. Against what we know of their nature, today they are craving fresh meat. A Tattoo is Inked Over Our Scars “. . . and the amaranth said to her neighbor, ‘How I envy your beauty and your sweet scent. . .’.” -Aesop, The Rose and the Amaranth Where our shoulders kiss: a soft coloring of pink spreading, blooming side by side—a single stalk. Petals bleed over our chests, across our backs—ivory, white, deeper shades of fuchsia: we are drunk with memory, reeling. I hold you steady with my unsteady hand, as we draw circles around the bruise of lung and spleen, of living body. Do not name this sorrow, I say, name this unfading instead. In paradise, we will call it Gethsemene, the place of ears, the blood of martyrs streaming down our necks. I tell you not to touch it—let it bleed across your jawline from where we share a mutual scare. Let the artist do his work, needle organs into place, whisper fortune—tell the one but not the other where these energies will lead once escorted from this place. You purchase silence and a pack of cigarettes. Smoke. The amaranth grows wildly inside us, burrowing its root into our limbs, feeding as it does on our complying—and we have been here long enough to know to breath first last, forget the sound our petals make when they ready themselves for dying, the garden growing with parasite. The last time you will look at a woman and see God. And God will see and call this good, this thing you do with your body, your left hand holding an ear, a startled pain, a knife—not mine clatters to the kitchen floor. You point in my direction, moaning. Our vanities flower and break. ![]() Kimberly is the author of White Goat Black Sheep (FLP) and her poetry has appeared in several literary journals including The 3288 Review, Temenos, Storm Cellar, Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review, The West Texas Literary Review, Windhover, Ruminate Magazine, Relief, RiverSedge and The Berkeley Poetry Review. She is an an MFA graduate of New England College, an English instructor, a book reviewer for NewPages, and an editor for the Nimrod International Journal of Poetry and Prose. Her writing explores trauma, sexuality, violence against women, motherhood, and displacement. Comments are closed.
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