Mothcatcher
Mashing lilacs in the garden – daylight, when I find you – my legs bare –
we taste them – so lilacs are the way we taste –
you’re warding off – a habit you had – the white sheet – an unshaded bedlamp – you used for mothcatching –
you’d keep them in a shoebox I found you – burning wings –
inside of me – feels the way different animals – break clams open – drop, crack, shuck –
you affect me – so this must be affection – the topography – of your company –
I knock on our bodies to check for hollows –
in the daydream I’m pregnant – with moths unwinged – sat heavy – in my belly – you step closer with a paring knife –
we walk past terracotta – pots, porch lights illuminating – tender – in your lobsterman boots – holding
your vialed – pulp –
which you’ll leave on my bedtable – beside the other flower pastes – pressing me against your toes cold –
if you take back – your affection
I’ll pluck the dandelions up – stuff them with the lightbulbs risked – in a laundry sack – I’ll smash the
high hats – yolk the eggs – clip the candlewicks – I’ll leave with all the light – I can carry
Deli
At the deli counter I wait
for cold cuts—watch tenders
grind cured slabs
sliver & wrap in wax—
I was jealous
of a stranger touching another stranger
in line I place
my order
I carry my meat to the car
—outside my parent’s house
Phil lays on the damp
blue tarp covered firewood
in his supermarket apron
he takes the markdown gun against my forehead
stickers me—a dollar ninety-nine
playing with the plastic thumb latch
on the screen door handle
—Uncle Danny’s
inside on a corduroy couch telling me
I shouldn’t have come all this way
while mom makes the wrong kind of hushing noises
slapping his neck brace with a kitchen towel
—I help sliver
potatoes—put oil on heat I—beat around
the gas stove—years ago
Danny taught me how to steal
from neighbor’s cars—the first time I siphoned
holding a cut black hose to my lips
I swallowed a mouthful of gasoline
—Danny makes me
mustard slabs of salami for him
set them on the glass coffee table
mom swats her hands in the air—I am making
dinner right now, goddamnit!—
blowing on her face with a tiny battery fan
in one hand, electric knife cutting tenderloin in the other
—on the television
a man playing soccer holds a padded rod sobbing—Danny’s gurgling
burping—I put a straw in a cup & hold it up for him
dab the wet skin bloating over the collar of his brace
—until I pretend to check
on the cat in the back room shitting
pawing the little soak pebbles to hide it
slipping to my old room
—with the broken twin frame mattressless
Phil lets me
run a thumb over his fake
front teeth—in our underwear he bites
my gold italic baby necklace
then calls me a tease
but I lay still on the ridged steel bedframe
—even I know
it’s the first blink that loses
______________
Christine Byrne is an MFA candidate in poetry at The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she won the John Logan Poetry Prize and was selected to read for the Mission Creek Festival Literary Walk
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