by

New At This

Like a cat she curled around her boy,

pulling him close to warm and feed him,

hoping that when company came, curious

and laden with gifts that no baby needs

unless they could be swapped for things more

useful, like clothes in graduating sizes and blankets,

–you can never have too many blankets—

though to tell the truth a stack of diapers would be

best of all, and after that a proper cradle,

she might lift his tiny hand for a tiny wave and

perhaps reveal his tiny face for the chorus

of ooos and aaaahs, without letting them

see that all she had to wrap him in was cloth torn

from her clothes, and when he wasn’t in her arms

he slept in a manger on a pile of fresh hay.

After all she’d been through, scorn was not welcome.

© Dana Hughes 1.7.15

by

The Time Had Come

I braided my hair today

after I took it from the box

in which it had lain for

more than forty years after

I insisted on cutting it for

the first time just before

my senior year of high

school because I thought

a senior year required a

sacrifice or change, however

one might choose to think.

That day the scissors opened

wide to slice through the

auburn river that ran constant

down my back every day that I

could remember, and when they

snicked shut, there sat a stranger,

a woman, holding my girlhood

in a limp puddle on her lap.

At school my classmates only

blinked and wondered why,

and I said it seemed like the

time had come, as it did again

today when I opened the box

and braided the hank like I

was standing in front of myself,

then carried it outside, nestled

it in the crook of limb and tree

and left if for the birds.

© Dana Hughes 9.27.14

by

The Hussy

The ginko round the corner wears a hint of pale gold

high in her branches which means that Fall is coming,

and as is her custom, she’ll change color in the dark

while only the moon dares look, so that Monday she’s

green and Tuesday she’s yellow, then come Friday

she’s bare, not loosening her leaves one by one in

slow studied spirals over months of shortening days,

but all at once she’ll drop them like Kanye’s mic and

stand naked with arms outstretched inviting the stares

and disapproval of oaks and poplars whose surrender

to the season is methodical, predictable, and dull but

seemly, though what they mutter behind her bare back

whenever the wind stirs, about her being brazen and

shameless and unmannered would sting if she cared

to listen, but she doesn’t.

 

© Dana Hughes

by

Syncope

In the sanctuary of the church where his memorial was held

the pews moaned as they filled, the weight of each witness

to his life increased by the heaviness of their hearts

and when they scooched across the ancient wood polished

smooth by generations of believer’s behinds,

the joins between seat and back popped like God’s knuckles

and the kneelers found the floor in a Greek chorus of sighs.

 

The air retreated to the rafters where portraits of the disciples looked

down with satisfaction, pleased that they were above it all now,

so that what was left to breathe was a swamp of candle wax

and perfume, and as the orders of worship became

fans and stirred it all together, St. Peter shifted the Kingdom’s keys

to the other hand and pinched his nostrils closed

while the choir threw back their heads and swaying, sang.

 

The priest began the homily with a gesture to the portrait

perched on a small table on the chancel beside a vase of lilies

all white and blooming, and there he was, beautiful,

his smile a flower opening beneath eyes that should have

winked to let his broken parents know it wasn’t so,

that the force of him, the height and depth and joy of him

could not be held within the tiny cedar box beside the frame.

 

And then the sound came, low at first, as Host and Cup were

raised with the words “this is my body, this my blood”;

a grinding, like a blade on turning stone but sharper

growing louder until all could hear as first one and then another

cracked, shattered and tumbled forth in shards from her mouth

where they had been the gate of grief, now sundered.

Teeth and tears fell together into her upturned hands.

 

© Dana Hughes 8.26.14

by

Swift

 Stiff-winged, the swift dropped straight down,

a dark slash against billowing blue

then leveled in a looping glide

to pluck midges from the air

above the lake’s wrinkled face.

 

On the next pass a glint of indigo

caught his black eye and in a high

chitter he asked

 

the stiff-winged swift rising straight up,

a dark slash against billowing blue

that levelled in a looping glide

to pluck midges from the mere

under the lake’s wrinkled face,

 

“How do you fly upside down?”

 

© Dana Hughes 5.20.14

by

Joy in the Garden

The garden was finally free of weeds after five hours

of pulling, hoeing, chopping, and cursing the randy

intruders that wantonly fling their seeds at my touch

so their return is guaranteed and I can feel them

winking at each other behind my back sharing their

joke about eternal life while the lettuce I planted blinks

in the delicate light of dappled sun and gives me a look

like Blanch DuBois explaining how the she has always

depended on the kindess of strangers. So I get the

lettuce a cold drink and with the laughing weeds at

my feet, I sit for a visit and I remind what I want to grow

that the soil is perfect and the days are cool and there’s

really no excuse for their indolence and before I know it

I’ve said too much and the lettuce turns pale and begins to

fade despite my desperate apology and the offer of another drink.

 

© dana hughes 5.6.14

by

In the Nest

Beneath the covers my sister sobbed

when a hard spring rain crashed against

the window, while in the kitchen, oatmeal

burbled in a pot that Grandma stirred.

What’s wrong, I asked, and she cried

and said there’s a nest in the tree outside

with naked baby birds that will drown when

it fills with rain and I can’t do anything to

help them, and I could do nothing to help

her but add my tears to hers by the handful,

like Grandma adding raisins to the oatmeal.

She was older than me though no more

than six and her age gave weight to her

words, so from that day on I trusted no one

to tend the innocent which included the

two of us.

 

When I was big I made a nest; wove twigs

so the ends pointed out not in, and I forged a

lightening rod of prayer to ground the holy

impassivity for all unfledged, then peopled the nest

with naked babies of my own who refused

to stay small, growing past what I could cover,

and  they did what they were supposed to do;

they feathered, flapped and flew.

I warbled all the worry of a lifetime as one

followed the other from here to where and

none looked back.  Then a hard spring rain began

to spill from my eyes, and looking down to where

I thought it would pool and rise, I saw it leak

through, as the rain in the nest outside the

window at Grandma’s house had done,

which we would have seen, my sister and I,

if we’d been taller.

 

© dana hughes 5.5.14

 

 

 

by

Oracle

It took a while to remember,

in fact it wasn’t until today that it came back

with a flash like heat lightening in an August sky, 

that day when I was twelve, and other girls were

women already, smug in their menses and messes,

and I was slow, and they called me slow,

still a girl with baby teeth and the fabric

of my blouse smooth and undisturbed,

but i had a fountain pen with peacock blue ink

in slender cartridges that were slipped into the barrel

and screwed down tight, and on this remembered day,

after i loaded my mouth as well as my pen,

sliding one cartridge between my teeth to chew,

preferring the cool, pliant plastic

to the splintered shaft of pencils,

the cartridge burst, and peacock blue ran

from the corners of my mouth and dribbled down my chin 

in a shocking flow, and though tongue-dyed,

fully-fledged words spilled out, and i spoke ink.

 

© dana hughes 4.24.14

by

An Idle Tale

Watching a skink skitter off the porch

where its night-slowed blood was licked

to life by hot tongues of morning sun,

so that at the sound of my toes in the grass

he shot into the shadows, forsaking his tail–

that living sliver of lapis left with necessary

detachment like the too-heavy child on the

refugee road or an offering to a hungry god,

I wondered aloud to the abandoned tail

how long it planned to wiggle

and did it think that I thought that it was all?

Right about then, my thoughts twitched back

to Peter, sitting cold with the thick-blooded

ten in a shuttered room when Mary came

running with a tale they called idle,

lacking the curiosity to come close and see

the quivering piece of truth she carried,

while back in the garden where the sun shone

on a heaved over stone, the part without the tale,

warmed and quickened, and moved on.

 

© dana hughes 4.20.14