Resident Room# 216
By Jacqueline Morrill
Her yellow horse painting
No eyes
says it all.
Rear legs too short,
Raised by father
more like a hyena
on the side lines,
He crossed the lines of
overbite yelping with eager
Her little girl panties, their elastic waistband
anticipation.
Interview
By Jacqueline Morrill
Him: You used to hide at night.
Asleep mashed in the corner
by the door. Blanket covering your eyes.
Me: In February I was ice.
Woke and saw you in the doorway.
It wasn’t you at first but then,
Him: I watch.
It was just a dream.
Me: I feel your jaw, teeth
clenching from 3 feet away.
Nails wet in my mouth from biting.
Him:
Me: Your skin, dry wood:
asking me please to give permission
please be quiet please
Him:
Me: Be quiet thank you stop
I am pink, scratching swollen
parts my fingers lock
handled please
Him: It is so very quiet
Family Values
after Andrea Yates
By Jacqueline Morrill
She finds me in the closet, hiding with Billy
overalls covered: screams and sweat
We huddle against coats boots, lighters
thought she’d be too drunk to hunt
but booze is just watered
down heartache, she’d say.
Her breath is roadmap
Red landscape ending:
Volcano her pupils.
My body is bird flesh wings fell out the sky
Twenty-one oven thorns my body is mine
Adhere bone tissue your bleeding eye
My body is my body is my body is burning
Mommy peels kid-skin from the doorway,
Remember
Curling against the acorn
Of her hip
Pocket-child tall as
I love you
Fear:
the table we all eat
except Mary
Mommy doesn’t feed Mary doesn’t look at Mary just cries and cries and holds an orange bottle crushes white sand fine Mary cries holds empty bottle cries Mommy laughs cries bats the bottle to the tile Mary’s fine white crib sand on her lip Mommy rubs it on her smack together kiss she is quiet in the chair edge of the sand in her we all gnaw except Mary
For a moment I think of knees
beneath dry grass
even the locusts avoid our summer
Mommy blisters Billy’s face
brand-like scratches to mark
her territory he is
we are
Our ribs our feet
Our skin our belly buttons
all of it property.
Watch!
Mommy holds him down
so small
he will never escape.
Still repeating his name
Still holding his head under
callous cold current
Still soaking her new apron
Still smoking her cigarette
She’s looking at me.
Afterwards: at the dinner table
By Jacqueline Morrill
Head down.
Head drop.
Bring mouth to hand
where palm-hook held them under.
Taste the hairs of roots
metallic, hot.
Scare marks scratched along the wall
I broke them.
Veined in a river of spoil,
tendons like sharp grass
sturdy until snapped.
Jacqueline Morrill is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. She hails from Worcester, Mass.
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