Poems by Dawn Manning
The Gretel Apocrypha
The wild speaks in arithmetic, ‘the odds’ its first tongue;
wild-dark bleeds me of words, blanches my anemic tongue.
The crickets are a holy choir—all legs and no tongues.
It’s been days since dad ditched us, goodbye dead on his tongue.
Couldn’t watch us starve—exile an easy erasure.
I wick brother’s fever with ferns, fine roots sooth his tongue.
Bless the creature in me made of grit and grime—got no
homilies, but hex this hollow with a homesick tongue.
Hunger implores, eat the thorned inkberries, but we ken
the fae who jerry-rig such food to jinx famished tongues.
By day we keep moving, keen as knights on a quest—with
locked-and-loaded lance branches, we lurk beneath wind’s tongue.
We mask ourselves—eyes underlined with mud—but the mouth
of night’s full of gnashing, the noxious kiss of its tongue.
I make an onyx circle, offer coiled snakes of hair;
we practice death with a smile, prick panic from our tongues.
I tuck brother in a moss quilt, quench his brow with spit;
scry the rustling shadows—bless instinct, our relic tongue.
Bless cramped calves, night vision, my double-sharp stick; prayers
come in threes in tough times—rote trick to untangle tongues.
Though the undertaker stalks us, unctions uttered through
our veins unveil the ancestors with violet tongues.
The wolves whisper around us, eyes waxing white; we bless
the rusted axe of thirst that taxes a xeric tongue.
Darkness yowls through the wild, yips guesses at our pet names;
our zodiac stills—cryptozoic our soft tongues.
& dawn pearls the horizon, & a smudge of grey smoke;
& we who are made prey crawl to it with panting tongues.
_____
Notes: A Pennsylvania Dutch hex can be a protective charm.
Gretel means ‘pearl,’ thus naming the speaker of this abecederian ghazal, which includes the ‘lost letter’ of the English alphabet: &.
Exodus Diptych
i.
We flee Iowa———in a yellow hatchback,
———brittle corn husks———picked clean of purpose,
settle into exile in Arizona,———where heat hums
———with a billion———————monstrous insects.
We flee the straight edge of dirt roads—-through mumbling fields
———just to twist a beige maze—————–stucco
overgrown with oleanders,—————–another stoop
blushing pink—————————————-with overdue bills.
ii.
Carnival glass bullets————-whiz through the palo verdes.
———We wade——————————after the other children
into irrigated courtyards———to reach the trees,
———fill our sacks——————with cicada shells—
a thousand——————spent casings
———split open——————down the back.
Shell cupping————the curve of my lifeline,
———thin———————-as the plastic bag
looping my wrist,————————–weighs less than a whisper
———you don’t belong here.————Go home.
Dawn Manning conjures art with words, metal, and other media while waiting for a clumsy heron named Big Blue to visit her stretch of the creek. She is the author of Postcards from the Dead Letter Office. Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and other publications.
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