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  • Writer's pictureMarías at Sampaguitas

Poetry by Emily Deibler

Daddy Issues

Daddy issues are always

an issue put on the girl, the plump

pomegranate snaked

down,

seeds

falling

like

bloody

teeth.


Oh, she has

daddy issues.

Her dad didn’t

hug her enough.

Snickering.


Sylvia Plath is known

for daddy, daddy, bees, eating

men, petals, fish bones,

Smoke. Daddy. If only her daddy

hugged her more.


It’s as if a dead flower

is to blame for its death,

not the hands who neglected

the watering can

and the earth.

The wilting is our

sin, the glove

to wear, our black

shoes.


A breath is blamed

when a hand has

stopped it.


Daddy, daddy, purple-black

glances when I dared to breathe

or achoo, who chased me

through the kitchen to hit me,

my first memory.


That’s a flaw of mine,

For being affected, for being

blue, not a flaw of his, on

his knuckles, red.



Victims

We have been born on cradles

of thorns; our skins are twilight with

cracked stars, pink cheeks growing purple.

By the time we are ten, we count our scars

and decide whether we want to be buried

or cremated once we cross the wrong men.

We learn how best to apply foundation to hide

the newest bruises, keeping our photo albums from

perusing eyes. Bodies are temples, moldy and

haunted, and some ghosts can't be exorcised.


Our funerals are tattooed on our joints. Segments,

fractures. We are hushed worms drowning on the split

sidewalk, tasting rain, salt, tears—crushed, squirming,

hearing Why didn't you stay in the dirt?



Sick Girl

Just when you think healing your mind makes you better, you write

with an ice pack on both wrists—you, forever broken.


Disorder implies things were once in order, but now

there’s nothing you can properly maneuver. (broken)


You’ve been doing good, better. The Prozac stays in the bathroom

drawer, mostly. You’re proud, queer, funny, clever, broken.


Green-and-yellow pills barely outpace the letters stamped on your creaky spine:

IBS-EDS-GAD-GERD-PTSD, “gimp”, “cripple”, “moth-head”, “brain-feathers”, “broken.”


People like you now, you, not your glass-fantasy-world shadow self, foaming, fuming

behind the lipstick like the Dead Sea in a bottle, all salt—surrender, waver, cower, broken.


Knees, back, neck, arms, wrists. (pain) And yet still you write, dream,

keep those Sunday afternoon plans. You, slanted, never broken.


Holly

Her bonnet and knitted scarf were as scarlet

and harsh as the blood of her fallen enemies

when she served in 'Nam. At her desk, she

twittered and fawned over a drawing book

she found at the used bookstore when

she wasn't busy penning erotic poetry

or weeping over a man’s dead father

in a Bloody Sunday film. The boys in class

would ask how she got so handy

with a needle, and she replied

with a white smile that, oh, well,

she was good with sharp things.


Corpsewood

Based on the Corpsewood Manor Murders

Still but new in their glorious

decay, the green moss and orange

fungus quicken by the black, oaken

deadfall; within the rounded,

ruined brick walls & hanging

gunsmoke, you can taste the wet,

leaf-long sigh of the professor

leaving his treasured golden harp,

kneeling by his discarded altar

stone, and cradling his lover's

ashes to his naked collarbone.


A native of North Georgia, Emily Deibler is a published poet and author. Her short story “Deer in December” was published in TL;DR Press’ Halloween 2018 Horror collection, NOPE. She has also published her poems “Turkey Hunting,” “Patty,” “Samantha,” and “Daughters of the Sun.” Her debut novel, Dove Keeper, came out in October 2018. She can be found on Twitter at @emilydeibler.

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