Rebecca Cook - Three Poems
Bluebird
Take down the bluebird wing and bring it home.
That piece of sky is hanging over the water by invisible threads,
like the moon reflected in the bathtub.
Don't let anymore yellow color into my bedroom,
it scares me at night. Like the stars shining on my floor.
I saw a head of lettuce in the garden, a woman's head rooted to the ground.
My grandmother was buried last year and now she is growing in my backyard.
Coming up green and beautiful like bedtime stories.
Give her the last of my Charlie Brown Books
and don't let the night come too close while I'm sleeping.
Bluebird was originally published in Black Buzzard Review Vol VIII (1995)
Spawn
Bastard mother of bastard words—I had no chance.
They’d already attached themselves to my placenta tongue.
They crowned, they slipped their blubbery heads past
my teeth before I could bare down and bite them off.
They are such nasty babies, wrangling round my hips,
thrusting their tongues out everywhere.
Four lettered backward breathing brats.
I am slathered in their spit, I’m a broken syllable oven.
I’ve washed and washed them out,
scrubbed them pink and blistered.
They don’t feel these bristles I smash against them.
They don’t feel my strap against their backsides.
Last night I knotted them into sheets and hung them out the window.
I was going to escape down the length of them,
lower myself past their bawdy screaming and run
but toddlers like these always outmaneuver their mothers.
Resembling a Mouse
I am spatula and spoon, soaking dish and spraddled sieve.
Forked fruit and finger bowl, dripping cloth and broken shells.
I am plastic cup and burning pot. Spilling seed and frozen chops.
I am ammonia sting and scouring pad, rusted knife and frosted fingers.
Scrubbed and stuffed and splattered grease, rolling pin and gravy boat.
I am jamming blades and crackling counter.
I am crimped and cut, tossed and tamped.
Spoiled and tossed, filtered and finished. A doublewrapped trussed toaster.
I am bottled vinegar and folded berries. I am boiling bones and basted belly.
I am soapy water, paraffin-capped, twisted mop and blistered palms.
Sifted, sugared, divided, parsed. I am pre-washed greens.
I am crisper drawer and cake-keeper, measured butter and browning tray.
I am apron, I am potholder. I am braziered, I am bagged.
I am filleted, I am strained. I am gloved, I am onion-eyed.
I am clogged, I am dripping. I am opening, I am closing.
I am reaching, I am bending.
I am quiet, I am quiet, I am quiet.
Oh, most exalted among women,
I am a polished floor.
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