Country Love and Lore
Scarecrow needs a new suit.
What will the neighbours think,
between our field and theirs
it is barely five miles.
You gesture in the direction
of the crows pecking away,
infuriated by our meek labour.
They screech and flutter
as if to warn us about renewal—
we don’t replace things
that want stitching, look at our coasters’
porous cork, almost falling apart
with the shamrock’s third leaf watered down,
scratched by the reckless hands of time.
Our bedside lamp has been flickering
like an ardent campfire for months.
Leave the birds, I want to say, let me
clothe you in silk, rub your fingers with oil.
I open the hot press and find rugs,
a glowing needle, willing to sew again
after last week’s Friday the 13th, moths
gnawing holes in pockets and sleeves,
and Púca¹ leaving its bog-wet footprints
in a circle around the chicken coop.
You snore in your creaking rocking chair,
rhythm to loosen my rigid hands.
Outside, a shadow flits by the window—
I pray for each new seed to dodge a beak.
*
[¹] Púca are shapeshifting troublemakers. As a rural being, many traditions associate the púca with the Celtic harvest calendar.
Twelve
It’s been a long time since these fields
have been tilled. The sun is glaring down,
clothed in a dry smile, as you pass me in a cart
and this time I don’t raise my hand in greeting.
My head finds itself ducking between the corn,
the maze where I used to pluck forbidden fruits
and masturbated under the preying eyes of rats
and crows, a tame sparrow on damper days.
I once kissed a corn kernel between your lips,
and your sticky tongue flicked out like a frog’s.
You found me at the farthest point from the path,
saw me squatting between the stalks and tickled
by the cob-silk that looked to us like pubic hair.
How your teeth glimmered in the heat, and shadows
flickered across your freckles. Your hand brushed
against my breast and fell with the cob at the gunshot.
My feet raise dust. These things I do to pickle eternity
rob the soil of its plainness, and my roots
as if weed unravel the earth as they’re ripped out.
Sticks and leaves lie strewn about the field
after the storm has passed, like driftwood
searching for something bigger to cling on to.
I crane my neck and catch the horses’ hooves,
a glimpse of your golden mane flying in the wind.
Learn more about Christina on our Contributors’ Page.
Christina’s latest chapbook, “Illuminations at Nightfall” (2022), is published by Sunday Mornings at the River and is available here.
(Photo: Alexander Acker/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
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- Two Poems by Christina Hennemann - February 1, 2024