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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