Four Poems
by Kaitlyn Owens
At the Clinic
A little miscarriage occurs
when you pick a centipede
off of your pantyhose.
In the process, his legs
are sure to gel with the nylon
and even if you tug him real gentle,
one’s bound to pop off.
The tiny green thing
will stop wiggling
in a few seconds.
I can see the doctor
through the windows
of the Hilton Head Prompt Care
scratching the stubs of his beard
and rehearsing breaking bad news
in front of a mirror. I think
he learned how to do all this
in med school, learned how a young girl
bleeding needs to be dealt with
softly, needs to be asked
where her mother is,
needs to be told that maybe
this is best for everyone
and that it can stay her own secret,
that ectopic is another word
for being in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
But when
he comes traipsing in,
his words glurg with ocean water.
And underneath his white jacket,
he’s wearing his Sunday best,
smug as Moses parting the Red Sea.
He offers to have a nurse hold my hand,
but I shake my head. I think hurricanes
look pretty in a hound’s-tooth dress.
I think the answers are salt water taffy.
I think that if I smile when the crash hit,
the waves won’t sting. They won’t
make my hips crackle
like Cocoa Krispies in a coffee mug.
The weight of the water won’t
drown me. It won’t fill my lungs
with salt but instead will reflect
sunlight, make things mirror bright
enough that I can see a centipede
on a fish hook being cast out
into the ocean so it can catch
a meal big enough to feed
an entire grinning family,
the water left only with a few air bubbles
from where that fish had been.
Growing
By the time I’m a woman, it’ll be
too late in July to harvest roses
for bouquets and farmer’s market jam,
for peach-trimmed petals to plush the lawn
in jewelry-box velvet. But I’ve heard herbs
thrive in the summer sun, cilantro
breathing in hot softly like a newborn
discovering the end of a nursery rhyme.
Basil finds its legs under the safe watch
of air wool-thick with dew and heat lightning
faster than any foal, and mint will wreak
havoc in full light. Some delicate plants
grow jealous, shaded like Southern ladies
under brims at the Kentucky Derby,
and they can’t comprehend the dizzy fire
dance we keep pirouetting until night comes.
How we wash the feet of our enemies
in a bath of sweat seasoned with fresh dill
and trill songs written by strangers who grew
a whole garden before we thought of seed.
What Will I Name Now That I Won’t Have Children?
A peony with its icing petals
sugaring the stem as its heavy head
anticipates the guillotine?
- Marie Antoinette.
My bed with its marigold velvet
cascading like a magic carpet
to divine lawless visions?
- Aladdin. No, Cassandra. No, too expected.
The grayed thunder
of a cardinal’s wing bifurcating
a trail of jet smoke?
- Girls whipporwill against the wind, hearts slapping the sky into submission all while wielding . names like Lark or Robin or Dove.
The smooth edge of a coffee cup
offering its body up as sacrament
but refusing to transfigure?
- I gave away the best parts of myself.
The morning sun
sheds the stars away,
and I’ve no words left
to echo in this empty drum
and make sound dance.
Inner Child
I dreamed I had a daughter with red curls,
diamond eyes, and paint-flecked skin. She banjoed
her way into the orchestra, made swirls
out of the graphed lines and binary code.
When the ferns grew too tall, she macheted
through them, unphased by snakes hissing hidden
in the mud. I’m jealous of how she weeds
out good from bad, sustenance from poison
with a gentle ease I still haven’t got
after thirty-eight years in this coal mine,
digging my way through the ore and the rot.
Can I become her? Can we frankenstein
together a newer version of me
that’s so easy to love. Just so easy.
BIO: Kaitlyn Owens is a product manager and poet based in Richmond, Virginia. With roots in Indiana and Tennessee, she writes both formal and free verse poetry exploring inheritance, identity, mental illness, and modern relationships. Her work has recently appeared in Novus Literary Arts Journal, Streetlit, Libre, and Hare's Paw, and she can be contacted and her work read at https://kaitlyn-owens.squarespace.com/