(PROSE POETRY)
2 POEMS
KATHERINE FALLON
2 POEMS
KATHERINE FALLON
SAFETY
is the apple, picked and eaten, or felled and rotten. Is the scream of a trussed beast, stretched long, a running dog, for sheering. Safety is the minor blood-let, is the major arcana, is Miranda in Brooklyn, knowing what others don’t. Safety is the smell of my sister’s oily scalp, her wide hips Rubinesque in the yellow of our grandmother’s bathroom, after the wake. Is your front teeth’s progressive inward slant, like stuck French doors to a throat I’d shove things down, love, if it wouldn’t hurt you. Safety was choosing you, safe or not.
is the apple, picked and eaten, or felled and rotten. Is the scream of a trussed beast, stretched long, a running dog, for sheering. Safety is the minor blood-let, is the major arcana, is Miranda in Brooklyn, knowing what others don’t. Safety is the smell of my sister’s oily scalp, her wide hips Rubinesque in the yellow of our grandmother’s bathroom, after the wake. Is your front teeth’s progressive inward slant, like stuck French doors to a throat I’d shove things down, love, if it wouldn’t hurt you. Safety was choosing you, safe or not.
REMEMBERING MYSELF
(names redacted for anonymity, would be included if selected for publication)
First Name: In anger, bruxism. Sandpaper's fricative slide (mouth forgotten, its shape spitting me out). More familiar, the clip of sewing sheers, something unfinished. Story-less. Dedicated to no one. Middle Name: For a peninsular region of France Mother's never been to, belonging elsewhere and known before as Less, Lesser or Little. Lilac; butter churned from the give of a wobbling heifer. Ruminant, chawing cud. Last Name: Derived from O’— What dirt yields to squelch hunger, the lightless knot, a nightshade with no eyes. A raptor, missing one talon. My front teeth for false promise: Let go. I will catch you.
(names redacted for anonymity, would be included if selected for publication)
First Name: In anger, bruxism. Sandpaper's fricative slide (mouth forgotten, its shape spitting me out). More familiar, the clip of sewing sheers, something unfinished. Story-less. Dedicated to no one. Middle Name: For a peninsular region of France Mother's never been to, belonging elsewhere and known before as Less, Lesser or Little. Lilac; butter churned from the give of a wobbling heifer. Ruminant, chawing cud. Last Name: Derived from O’— What dirt yields to squelch hunger, the lightless knot, a nightshade with no eyes. A raptor, missing one talon. My front teeth for false promise: Let go. I will catch you.
Katherine Fallon's poems have appeared in Juked, Apple Valley Review, Colorado Review, and others, and her work will be featured in Best New Poets 2019. Her chapbook, The Toothmakers' Daughters, is available through Finishing Line Press. She teaches at Georgia Southern University, and shares domestic square footage with two cats and her favorite human, who helps her zip her dresses.