Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 05/06/24

The Long, Stilted Stay

I was watching Chub Peterson’s whang
poking out from the leg of his shorts.
He was saying he’d won two cat’s-eyes off Paul Crowley,
which was good for a retelling
and a damn long peek.
William, I have stood beneath some rock,
listening to the ghostly notes of an ancient earth,
the echo of fir and the mimicry of pine,
and I swear they never mentioned
how a woman is to keep her mind.
I run to the top of the stairs a dozen times each day,
and the greatest vision yet to be revealed
is the straining muscles of Melissa Enright’s thighs.
Of a desk held by knee, of a riser planed low,
of minerals hummus-bound in the wet craw of May,
of bloodstone, of rabid wind,
of the long, stilted stay,
yes, and in the foretold and stupidly forgotten,
I have never seen a jackass sorry
or a face left unlined.

There is a warehouse in Dallas, Georgia,
where Ruth dusts salt shakers
molded to the shape of a fat tomato on the vine.
There is a counter on the west wing of a five-and-dime
where Jenny Baker French-kissed a man
she’d never see again
and where Doc Baily is known to have died.
I stood below the branches of a crape myrtle
two blocks from the last house of my former life
and swore from that day forward to love mankind,
and the branches never mentioned the woman
who would break me in time.
This is the part no one knows. This is the secret:

I collude with shadow.
I sleep in the corners of rooms.
Nothing hangs from me.
Nothing is forgotten.

I bend to lift a small boy into a pool of water,
as if to raise a goblet,
as if to shade myself from the unrelenting light.

B. Lynne Zika is a poet, essayist, photographer, and fiction writer currently living in Los Angeles. Her books The Strange Case of Eddy Whitfield, The Longing, and Letters to Sappho: Putting Out the Fire are available on Amazon and through other booksellers. In addition to editing poetry and nonfiction, she worked as a closed-captioning editor for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. She has received awards in short fiction, poetry, and photography. Her father, Yewell C. Lybrand, Jr., was a writer himself. Before his death at 34, he bequeathed her this advice: Make every word count.