Poetry By Kimberly Ann Priest

A 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. 

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