Sawfish
by Kearney McDonnell
entreat the furniture
I wrap the living room in string around armchairs doorknobs lampposts around iron goat leaping |
red installation
hold wooden boards to floor |
mom winds her way around
the edge of a beach her father an iron hip sculpts goats from used car chrome |
builds stilts from
discarded floor boards I fall from their height cracking my tooth on slate the remnants turn to chalk impossible to preserve in a glass of milk |
burial at sea
they toss his ashes into the ocean the wind blows so that they are on my teeth under my tongue |
mom takes a skein of red string wraps it around my arms wrists ankles |
dad sinks into himself dark and quiet ocean lip droops left neglect eyes closed prunes pear trees silently |
I bargain with furniture
|
mom combs for pipe-stems
amidst fish-ribs and rocks fills her fist strings a necklace her jaw like a sawfish iron of replaced hip fused like bumper chrome |
I build structures on sand from washed up floor boards pipestems sawfish bones my own teeth |
you drive me to the cape the coldest day of the year the beach is frozen over rocks coated in ice inches deep white shining brutally cold wearing blankets striped blue and pink walk to the lighthouse reach the top it is bright we are just a hair too alone |
I stack my teeth like bricks enamel cracking like mortar
|
beachcomber’s marrow
watching for cheekbones on wooden planks hedged into bulwark rotting from the tide building row boats thrones bedrooms on wet sand like cement |
I sit on the furniture
mom binds me in enamel bathes me in goat’s milk washes my face dips her toe in a pool of it I soak in it at night rinsing salt from my skin |
Kearney McDonnell grew up in Pipersville, PA. She is studying Visual Arts at Brown and is interested in therapy, puppetry, and creative writing.