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Miracle Thornton, Grade 12, Interlochen Arts Academy (Interlochen, MI)
We’re All Natural
I.
in this whiny little cul-de-sac, where cars rumble
and stall, garages are gassy and stale by sunrise, i
find that light takes time to seep through white
vinyled homes. they are dripping until late noon,
shadowed and caving with it even in the hours after
curfew. in a kitchen, a mother teaches her girls how
wash out box perm, ammonia for the early morning
pick me up. she kneads their chemical burns until
the scabs come out smooth, swirl down the sink
drain easy. the mother butters their scalps, their
heads rolling and rolling into the countertop until
they don’t feel so brittle. none of it looks right.
angelled, the girls’ hair stripped gentle as a baby’s,
it rips as a father jostles them before work.
II.
he knots his daughters’ curls in his pocket, heavy
like coins. at the office, a new desk lady asks him
where he’s going. he spilled coffee like an
unprofessional and she needs to see a source of
identification. he pulls the hair out. the desk lady
shrivels but lets him pass. he sits. he minds his
business. at lunch, the table beside him clump like
curdles of milk and hiss, a rotten release until the
cantine smells like stagnance. the father tucks his tie
into his waistband, lifts just to dab—
in the end,
i believe, the flick of his wrist must have been a tad
aggressive. cock and roll. twist and pop. a kink in
the joint like backfire. the oil and vinegar of his sub
shop roll still glossed on his chin, the daughters’
hair scatters across the crummy floor.
III.
they say she acted out of desperation, the mother, as
she plummeted the knife into her pillow. they say
she huddled her daughters to her chest and taught
them how to braid the eagle feathers into rope, work
the quill into speared ink pens. they say the eulogy
was written, like a love letter, in white ink.
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Charlotte Hughes, Grade 11, Heathwood Hall (Columbia, SC)
Elegy with Deer Teeth
(after Emily Skaja)
After you’re gone I drive so fast I break my speedometer. At a hundred and ten
miles per hour, the corn stalks lining the two-lane road flood into a rural
monstrosity, beak & talon. So I am dumb & forget my fleece-lined jacket &
bring the knit one. Outside the school gates I do not call myself anything and
inside I am Hughes, Charlotte F. I write down my memories and then mince
them like meat. I say there are things I don’t want to remember. Meat lives in
these fields & hunters harvest it. I hear rifle shots between classes & pretend
it’s the sound of textbooks dropping. You don’t need textbooks now & I try to
tell myself later that I’ll find what preachers call peace or at least I won’t want
to drink dead-eye coffee like water or flip off the next UPS man who rings my
doorbell. Other than a cornfield, there is no place a girl can run. The corn cobs
are desiccated & now dead & a crow laughs at me. God, girl. I pick a corncob
off the stalk & bite into dust & I am revolted by the invasion of privacy. But I
ask for heavenly food.
Danu will perform Celtic standards during a free lunchtime concert at Penn State Behrend on March 3. The performance is part of Music at Noon: The Logan Series.
