Portrait of a Lady Down River
Four-fingers-crossed
And two fro-twiddling
Sharp shink type-writer-ing
Down the white river splay
Of the court transcript, haiku
That which five of you
And seven of course jurors’
Monologues, inner
Inside that wooden-seated
Force of travel, you
Gold Coast to Straddy and
18-or-something houses
Later, you
Stitching that
four-fingers-crossed
And two fro-twiddling
Baby face
From one lane over,
You, passing up on that
Chance to fly
Further than moving and
More than a hop-skip-and
Jump off the bank and
Into my arms, you, fragile
Back creaking and
Moaning in many mens’
Ears red with the truth
Out and
“I don’t blame you for cheating, leaving that alcoholic,”
I say, drugs and double-wide and all
Of the iterations you sung
To me rattle in my handwriting
As your shadow does
Against the wind, you
You may not see me, yet
Hear me through the rustles of
Leaves dished across the
New ground of
Wherever-you-are I’ll look for
You,
Look for you in me
And where your face meets
My father’s, you
Conjoined to me by the
Hip and palm swaying
With that sing-song
Crosshatching, you,
I wonder how your feet
Felt walking
Three-stepped out the door
Because nothing was
Quick enough, you
Jackalope, you
Steam from my mug
And eight shoulders
Crawling up the walls
Outside my crib, you
Stand cooing at my cooing
You, I love and breaking
At the hair strands, you
Graining from my hand in my
Stomach, you, my
Teeth cramping,
You, my forefather
And bejeweled woman
Card, postcard,
Hello, goodbye, and
See you later when I make up with
Him, you,
Where is the correlation
You,
And him,
Both running, correlation,
Maybe,
I’ll run, too, away from me and into
You, the better half,
You, cream-of-the-crop,
You, a writer and horrible at
Telling me where I come from and who and why is he the way the who he is when you are such a bejeweled woman?
—
Blue Chynoweth, Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, Creative Writing ’27
Pledge of Allegiance
I don’t know when two ears and
One mouth became two
Mouths and one ear, but
I know what came from it
I know the static
I know the nubs
And I know hands and fingers and fingernails and feet,
Like a memory,
Remembrance
Of the way I dug myself
Into a glossy mix of dirt and water and sand
And how I came out
A silhouette
Of my future purpose, carted by the cold air
Into a world where men are movement
How I came out
From the skin of a plum and pink oil paint and terracotta
Into the grey broiling of cement
As a rotting vibrancy made to prove
My state of being more than an imprint,
More than a balloon-ated looking glass into
The caveman-slurried sludge of the
Truth—that
I was made by my mother and inside
And not fountain pen on paper
My state
Just then, I am deli meat, bare-knuckled
Out into a polyester flag that rubbed and rubs against me with its
Too slick and
Grained, ingrained into this one, living organism
Where, there! I am
Told that my hair against tree bark
Is a carving stone of moolah
But I pledge my allegiance to the earth
And my mother,
Where my legs kicked out in formation
And platformed against one single patch of hot cinder flesh
So that my soles could grind against the ground
Without any spare, gnawing fat
Yet America
Expects the cash cow–
Blue Chynoweth, Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, Creative Writing ’27
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