Scar Tissue Land
I don’t recognize the yellowed veins of wood
chapping into hot, sun-hardened beams. It has been too long
since I came here last: to the scar tissue land
where my pets are buried. My brother, a perpetual shadow,
whispers from miles away, and the pale blonde cats are here again,
their hair settling in clumps on dusty lapels.
Microwaved curls of clover that burn up
a brilliant green leave traces—never to be as they were.
Everything foreign will dissolve with time,
but I am so alone that I need the arms of this
decaying porch chair—if not any other in the far,
rusting world—to meet mine. Meet
my wrists, whole and uncomplicated
like the falling mist that sets gently down
summer’s warmth, saying heal over now.
Trill
Today a flute harmony dug its thumbs into my collarbone
and hollowed me out like I had meat inside.
It left a husk that set my teacup down
on the white wicker table across from my mother,
who was reading Pound’s Cathay for the first time.
I still don’t know how to say the word beautiful to her
or how to say that I feel like a gutted crab shell
without using the word beautiful.
Even a creature boiled alive must release steam
along with its last shrillnesses
and those cannot be lies.
Memento
I miss my old life.
The only breaths I take now are while writhing—
I once cared about things like weeds
and the number of chalk marks on my walls.
Last year we held something
to our lungs too liquid,
too pliable to be contained by hands—
we dropped it and grasped at the shadowed debris
of sunburnt prairie weeds
and wetless teabags—
shriveled mummies
now stains in flower-painted porcelain.
Age
If I am the bigger one of us,
wrap me up when you’re done.
Take what’s left of me home, and
preserve me.
For the hell of it,
apply me to your skin—
being still young, I will try my best
to soak in, to dissolve the film.
At this neighbor’s fence, there is no tired—
there are bicycle spokes, and
there is the sound of you
opening a can for me.
There is no sleeping, even after I have seeped in.
There are bubbles, and
there are burrows
where boneless animals mate.
Bess Amelia Yeager is a recent graduate of Kenyon College and current resident of Indianapolis, IN, where she roams city parks after work with her father’s film camera.