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TRAUMA

 

In a reticule of sunlight among grass-blades

I howled up my sisters. They wouldn’t come.

Curlews dissevered the sky. The quiet stalks

flicked grasshoppers at me. I feel it now

when I think with nerves only.

  

                                            Deadly elder stank

that insects were epileptic in. Three years old, I howled.

Accused the sun which cuffed me back like a lout.

Howled till my frenzy was one performing scare

that left only twitching air where insects were,

though the careless tropic grass ignored me.

  

This the first memory of life I have:

gullet strained inside out, a scream so rigid

I seemed crucified to it, just sent for this, abandoned,

flakking to mar the innocent untired day,

a nailed-up chimney of scold livid in the grass,

the dim interior of child blood turned out,

for I did not want my chaos.

  

                              And do not want it now.

Depositing into nervous thought I feel

invisible shards flick by me and green sash

sprout an interior almost up to my eyes,

a hot light banging me between the eyes

and the ceiling above me being torn like paper.

The blood bangs and I stiffen and the blood

can bolt nowhere, implodes. I know

that those three sisters left when I was three

and chaos returning cannot be shrilled away.

Alan Marshfield

   

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