10-18-2023
Linda Bryant Davis
DIGEST OF RED
Got married in red
velvet. Not bright like a clown
nose but like blackened
cherry, old blood. Grandma
warned: Marry in red, you’re better
off dead. At birth
my baby breathed 30 fragments
of air & like teakettle
steam vanished. Cheap
apartment carpet red. Tattered
theater curtains in two tones
of claret. Red like rust
nibbling the old Blazer. Mom
delighted in the streaks
of cardinal flitting in the hospice
courtyard through the bending
willows. I remember her last
hours, how she stared
at the sunset before the morphine
trance. I was in the electric
shock of divorce. Red hues
comforted me. I said yes
to crawdads in the shiny
vat, to the eruption of flame
maple & beetroot. Lucky
as a cornsnake who sheds
her vermilion skindress, I stake
my claim. I breathe. I am
not Plath. Not Sexton
or Woolf. I stumble still
into mudslides of heavy
heartedness. I gather
myself like a disheveled
bouquet, red
tinged petals
tumbling.
UNCOVERED
In my family we didn’t show
the underneath, nothing
that trembled, everything
hidden by crisp
cottons & mohair
cardigans I could stretch
over my little-bit
too-big stomach & down
to my kneecaps. That one
time I ripped the rear
seam of my madras
shorts, my back
side & underwear
exposed. I shuffled
from Dairy Queen straight
home, five slow
blocks & I crouched
down so I could stretch
my sweater past
my bottom. I looked
like a crackpot but I
revealed not one fleshy
patch of my bottom. My mom
was over 70 the first
I saw her breasts. I eased
her out of her lacy
Maidenform after the surgeon
removed an acorn
sized tumor. With a yellow
striped rag I washed
her back to the tail
bone & sponged
her underarms. They brought
to mind the tenderness
of a sliced peach. In tears
she said, I hate
for you to see
me like this, but I
was relieved, overjoyed
because finally she was
human & I was — without
blinders — taking care of her.
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
It was before the starfish began
to disappear, before open
sores boiled on their bright arms
causing them to crumble. You hurtle
down the bouldered slope to the rough
beach as low tide offers its damp
surprise of limpet & sea squirt. You’re 10
& believe the sassy eagle orating
above us. You name him Between Two
Worlds. Sea star wasting disease
is rapid, within three days their arms
break & disintegrate to a flimsy mush, warming
seas a cause, or a virus. Perhaps oxygen
depletion. For you, son, a changing diagnosis
like a dance floor strobe. It’s bi-polar; no,
it’s anxiety, underlying Asperger’s, definitely on
the spectrum. Try Xanax, Prozac, Depakote. Son,
when you recover, no more night terrors. Emergency
room interventions gone & the adults who broke
your heart apologize, every single one. When the sky
flames to jasper red I’ll drive the pickup
up the mountain. You’ll wiggle into your Spiderman
pajamas & recite your favorite creatures: periwinkle,
barnacle, giant octopus, squid. While nodding off
you ask, Mommy, are they called sea stars
or starfish? Both & even more—brittle star,
basket star, la estrellade mar, I answer. I tuck you
in with your blue tattered dolphin & kiss
your forehead, once for the generous & splendid
day we’ve had, twice for all the stars in the sea & sky.
-from Between Two Worlds, selected by Assistant Editor, Karen Carr
Linda Bryant is a poet and journalist who lives in Berea, Kentucky, where she runs the Owsley Fork Writers Sanctuary. She has been published in literary journals including Courtship of Winds, Whirlwind Review, Gateways, Serving House Journal, and Willawaw Journal. Bryant has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and has won two national fellowships for her writing.
