PIHM Poetry: Recreation, Thunder Comes Knocking & The Equinox
ReCreation
My garden is full of weeping, my skies are starless.
Nightly, girls trench my flowerbeds gasping
"Is that my lung? Is that your heart?"
Come dawn I wash their blood off the cobalt stepping stones overrun with weeds while fleet-footed foxes pick their bones clean.
Through the open window She sings, satisfied.
Two new sprouts have come out of the ground today baring used teeth riddled
in cavities.
In the kitchen a being with too many eyes too many faces—teeth
flips flapjacks.
Window open,
She sings "beloved belated the ‘our ends
draped o’er weary women baring bristled broches."
I come inside and kiss
her bruised bloody mouths, relentless,
until the songbirds crawl out of the cellar ready to hunt anew.
Yesterday She and I went berry picking. I swallowed sticky berries that
fizzed as they crumbled
under my sharp teeth
and She sang about the end again;
the six black wren wings growing
out of her battered thorn-encircled head twitching in glee.
The world is full of so much color
and half of it lives within her ten
too many fingers.
Tonight, more girls will come
tilling for the tactile taste
of their bodies,
and beloved-of-mine will have Her fill and I will lay in bed,
pretending to sleep while lights whirl overhead, heralding
in violent streaks of coppery-green.
Invisible trumpets will raise the dead
and leave them battered, begging on my chalky salty doorstep.
All the while the little girls will whisper, witless blind witnesses "is that my lung? Is that your liver?" And my beloved—my beloved will tred
and tear
flesh from bone, precariously burying
their tiny teeth for tasteful tea leaves.
"What's it like
to live in your body?"
It’s night. I stand in the kitchen
alone.
The girls are screaming and the day
seems so far away.
Where has the time gone?
Why has it always gone?
My shadow is in the doorway, carefully out of the casted copper-green glow
I bathe in,
scorch in.
Distant drumbeats push a creek's dark flow to the backdoor, lapping
licking the melting walls clean
I sound so much like a boy.
I could of sworn I was—
but maybe he—me—is a reminiscent
of the boys fertilizing my fields,
who’s jaws and throat apples I found
with fonding
and added to my form.
"Like an invisible museum,"
I whisper "you could fill rooms
with all my stories—my bodies.
You could hang me upside down and unroll my details
drop by drop.
Nail by nail.
The morning
The night
The end;
each flaked flesh a world.
I birth recreation,
teem with it.
And She drags in the mixing parts strip by fleshy strip
to decompose, decompress, deatomaize under my palms.
Thunder Comes Knocking
Rain shakes the foundations as She comes to the door.
She’s dressed in tears;
in the thousands of melting faces
She has touched.
The thousands of blood-clotted fashions She’s ruined. Coat after coat
Color after color
Face after Face.
Life
after
Life.
“Beloved,”
is the voice of thunder;
the voice that births life and
floods it.
She rapts Her knuckles against the door as Coat
Color
Face
rumble off Her,
pooling in streaks of stringy pink on the porch. It rolls thickly, cooly, under the door.
The keyhole becomes a fountain mouth; running rusted red.
Your professor once said amazonian floods are copper; so bright with minerals life bursts at each touched drop.
Somewhere in your drafts
you have an email labeled for him Life Does Not Burst It Drowns.
Your carpet floods,
stains.
The halls run like streams
screams
brushing your ankles in cold
crushing cascades.
That’s another thing they don't tell you life and death spring from the same thing: Cold.
She knows you have woken, feels you struggle –one foot in front of the other– through her flood and remains
un-knocking at the door.
Your smile is running,
thawing into the rushing tide.
Your hands are shaking.
It is so much like drowning
your heart cannot tell the difference. The knob slips and slips from under your fumbling numbing thumbs.
“Allow me.”
Her voice flows through the keyhole, gentle, rocking with love.
It vibrates around your ankles. Bubbles deep in the basement,
in the fluid chambers of your heart. The lock breaks under water weight.
Your life runs away from you:
Couch swept out the back door.
A floating pizza box, still warm, slips
through the open window.
Your forgotten keys become entangled in loose cords.
Your clothing dissolves.
The family photos
heirlooms
decorates
dinner plates
drift away.
All your life has lived indoors, in waiting.
“Beloved,”
You step out to greet Her with a kiss.
The Equinox
There's a man in the corn fields whistling
while the ladies scutter through the stirring stalks blindfolded.
The rough fabric flakes their reddened skin
as their fingers curl deftly ‘round
ear after ear, dropping
squashing pussing fruit
into lamenting wicker baskets
while the stinging stalk leaves protest and curl –stretching, scratching–
trying to wrench their eyes free.
You stand, idly, the only lady (?)
dressed fit for a groom.
If anyone was to decided, declaim, dictate you a Him not Her not They
it would be The Him, The Man In The Fields.
The woman call each other’s names: Clark
Clandestite Calamity Renee Tamaray
And each call falls shorter than the last:
Clark Clandestite Calamity Renee?
The hay man demands his equinox prize; a groom, a bride—
this year it's the ladies who cry
through the fields averting their eyes.
Crisp autumnal air bites you
peeling dry
what was not left horse of your voice
shouting
“I am not a bride, I am not a bride.”
But you are—most want to be—a groom.
Clark
Clandestite
Calamity
Calamity!
For the love of god Calam—
The stalks stir and sigh parting ways on either side
as the hushed soft scratching of footed hay passing—pauses by your side.
C-Clark? Clandestine?
You had seen Him the year before last fresh and weakened fallen
from prime after harvest.
His vestments had torn old Patch-needed by The Maiden
who had forsaken watch of our field of corn and bred Him
scare-crowed skinned walker.
Clark? Clark!
“And what do they call you?”
The voice is a fever itching your face, brains, veins.
Oh god finch please please CLAR—
“Clark.”
A hand slides crinkling
pleasing sun-dried beetles through your cheeks, scalp, heart.
“Oh, I see. How would you like to be my Man of the Hearth?”
About the Poet
Alba V Sarria is a multi-award winning poet & flash fictionist with 30+ publications. Their debut book Night Life: A Folk Horror Poetry Collection received 13 honors & award nominations within its first year of publication, including being a Featured Book at the 2024 national Gaithersburg Book Festival and being showcased at the FDA’s 2024 Muirkirk Art Gallery.
You can find Alba on Instagram: @albasarriawrites
