Dilemma
If I tell my son his mouse is dying
I may as well tell him the rest:
her shallow breath means her lungs are deflating,
causing the rest of her organs to slowly betray
her. If he asks me if it’s painful, well.
What can hide him
from that truth? Her cage
is littered with her loss of strength:
untouched water bottle, food pellets
staling in the pink plastic bowl.
If I tell him she’s dying I may as well tell him
the worst of it, that his father and I
knew exactly what we were doing
when we encouraged him to choose her,
the fastest mouse of the dozens
of albinos in the pet store’s glass aquarium, yes,
we brought her home to die and hoped
that in his grief he might learn the hard fact
of life. We named it mercy. We named it introduction.
Better now than let sorrow catch him later.
And if I tell him that I may as well tell him
I was wrong. What was I thinking. As if
arming him with this one little death
were protection enough.
With a Soft and Certain Bang
– line from Margaret Wise Brown’s Pussy Willow
She collects tricky winds
and sudden rain in her mouth –
the last of June. Soon a bouquet
of common yarrow. July will press
its fingers deep in her ribs.
What’s a stronger word for August, how
it legislates down legs in sticky
trickles. A butterfly says,
“Anything that anyone would look for
is up in the air.” She praises
the duplicity of oxygen. Brings a bouquet
of impatiens for her grandmother’s
birthday. October, forgets a bouquet
of anything for her other grandmother’s
birthday. Instead decorates the mantel
with witches and skulls, leaves them
until it is time to be thankful, to be
cold. A bird says, “Everything
that anyone would ever look for
is up in the sky.” So she praises
blue & grey, next a savior’s birthday.
Poinsettia bouquet. January
is the worst with its newness.
February second with its love
& heavy snow. March has nothing
to say. April, a daffodil bouquet.
The bird says, “Everything worth
looking for is under the leaves,”
She praises crooked branches.
The soft and certain bang
of an heirloom iris bouquet.
Her 33rd birthday. May.
Risk
The sea is riskiest, not the rage sprees, bones cracked, marrows sucked clean by her hungry mouth. Not even the men, dumb & blind in their lust. It’s always been the pull, the greedy abyss which takes & takes. It leaves nothing, she leaves nothing: her mirror, then. This must be why she fears the ocean. There was never a place she felt less safe: nothing for her claws to catch should she sink below the surf spit, waves ready to gulp her down whole. 50 meters till the rapture of the deep. The tide rolls over her toes. She worries. Maybe she always wanted to die, just like this, standing in the same spot for hours. A pelican dives into a crest. Her legs urge her back to the safety of the shrub line. Oxygen shrieks inside her lungs.
Leigh Anne Hornfeldt, a Kentucky native, is the author of East Main Aviary & The Intimacy Archive and the editor at Two of Cups Press. In 2013 she was the recipient of a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and her poem “Laika” placed 2nd in the Argos Prize competition (Dorianne Laux, judge). In 2012, she received the Kudzu Prize in Poetry. Her work has appeared in journals such as Spry, Lunch Ticket, Foundling Review, and The Journal of Kentucky Studies.
