For today’s post I point readers in the direction of Plume, Danny Lawless’s astonishing literary magazine. A recent issue features three poems by Nicole Cooley, all entitled “Trash” and all dealing with mothers and daughters and complicated loss. Here’s one:
Trash
I have no wanting, I text to myself. Which terrifies me. I circle the
closed down high school parking lot. For my birthday, my husband
gives me a book about walking in Paris, Russia, Grand Isle, Louisiana.
I circle our block: weeping birch tree, plastic bag the color of
parchment. Today is as hot as the inside of a mouth, and I remember
the man who died beside us, on the other side of the curtain, at the
hospital, who was pumped full of drugs and air and could not be
brought back. How his wife wept and shook his shoulders, his
daughters late to arrive. How we pretended not to be there, in our own
curtained room, inches away. A body could be lost to the virus as fast
as loose change scattered in a pocket. Any word my husband and I
could exchange after that: pink as a tongue tip. To keep her safe I set
my daughter back inside me like a Russian nesting doll we bought on
the streets of Berlin before we had any daughters. I am walking. I am
treble-clefting. I want nothing except swimming pool blue—the color
of my daughter’s eyes when she was born. Bring me back. Or don’t. I
am dreaming of every phrase I can fathom for escape.
You can read all three here:
https://plumepoetry.com/three-poems-31/
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Author: Denise Duhamel
