3 poems
by Elisabeth Horan
Heavy Woman Drown
You've been in the dolorous
morning since birth, well eight,
well it was college, fine, 30.
Morning bells clang,
the horse colicked;
some fine steed he was.
And look at you woman, marching
harmless to the mountain,
who says, mother may I, who
asked daddy permission:
for whom does the church bell chime,
knowing children will-to-suffer.
I see in purples.
Shimmering, breathing pavement.
It's the meds or anxiety.
You shimmering: a salt lake
shallow brackish salinated
Weightless water
you,
so heavy-armed, caked with white granules
caked upon your face for lack
of softer caviar, this is fish
eggs in the grave, my belly cut
sturgeon-style to eat
with crisps, champagne;
it's Russian tea-time.
Rocks succumb to
my pockets,
heavy
woman
drowndrowndrown
Robin's Egg Blue
Soft bird loves her night light,
gowns her body and walks the last cerulean mile,
flies in her mind,
stumbles on a miserly broken wing.
Along like ramparts, Hitler’s fizzling last stand.
What a bunker. What a Braun.
What a petty woman’s war. Or stronghold.
Had she had a birdie to release, did
she wish for a pop-out screen or a
Female Parliament to impeach, did
she know what I know, that
Her daddy was her lover.
Did she know of the fetus which doth
smother a new mother?
Daughter turns, burns.
Small broken bird falls to asphalt out jail window,
so softly, as the morning eats children.
Scrubbing Dishes
Haha child.
This is all you’ve got?
My nights are filled with sunken ships,
filled with fetuses born of this witch,
little spines, crooked, broken
fingers, toes, only count to seven, and curled
hideous, veins outside of transparent skin
a heart beats black, the lungs puff
sooted. My daddy takes me from behind
sings Edelweiss and Baby Mine, lines
a gun up between my eyes, Doktor Mengele
fingers the trigger.
But I don’t die. Not even close.
Rather, I sing to showers full of ghosts.
Women with rashes and pubic lice, men
swinging low, ashamed, pissing raw sacred-
ness. Trains of cows, full of meat to market,
whoosh by in a clickity-clack, the waving faces
of Weisel & Niemöller & Milosz
Inside, Carcasses. Dear
God, racks over racks of
Children…my mind inside out
Ted ted Ted ted. Dead.
Gone. Ripped front to back, dick
to head. Me. Blue nighty.
Rooftop flier.
God says,
go for it Sylvia, go ahead and be
a martyr.