Inheritance
Age four maybe five she opens her mother’s jewelry box
to star-fire dispersion, the strange mechanics of lobster claws, chain clasps
bracelets broken-jawed, ropes of amber and jade, heavy fruit of gems,
of grandmothers she never knew, bulky shanks of pewter, of silver pinked like the sky at dusk—all the ways light can be caught and kept—finds
a pouch black velvet, finger-sized, opens it (don’t),
inside it a star, a crumb of light, the lowest common denominator between
you and the universe, you are less small, less lost in a house of voices large
as brass bedrails, as broken pianos, you forget it might slip
through your fingers to the rug, colored old boxes,
dusty attic, she finds you, drags the shag, rasps her palms
combing for that stone, sobbing, her emblem
of infinity lost to infinity, pulls you both
into a denser, blacker place where
she is no longer your mother
just a woman
wrecked
sometimes I am surprised by my own placidity
my girl comes to me, cowed, wide
eyed with memory—a shoestorm,
sudden hot squall, sky-blackened
winds and debris, one purple tent
forever wrecked—pulls me to her room
mommy don’t be mad to confess:
thick slick of ointment caked
on her dress, on all four walls,
the sheen of grease making
a maze of mirror mirrors—tell me,
who will be the victim
of this small crime?
Look— a grazing cow, her jaw pondering
mysteries—nothing keeps the grass
from worshipping the wind
hold you, it was never about you
let us lie down in this new pasture, sprawl
in the soft grasses of some bigger love than us
lose ourselves in their shush and sway, let cloud shadows
wash over us, bless us with flickering light
with miles and orchards of light
Neighbor Lady Suffers Stroke
like paddles licking
like sculling boats,
some law propels
on a current raisin
scree swirls on waterskin
congresses in mangroves,
argues tampon taxes, electoral
school litanies of rights
and lefts quilt patterns
she floats on autumn
lacquered to light
gathering quivers
arrows whisper
branches painted black--
River! rushes out of her, warm,
she her arms moving it,
hair growing long and a color
with plankton, she listens
how she made it here
it’s night, the light pricks
flash in bright rings,
the Andy Gibb trills
like a siren, go towards
the glittering necklace
the black bead, she is pulled into
another big bang place
her other self and she
will smell each other’s hair,
will say again
to her children Eat
every last bean!
and to each other
not enough
Elizabeth Cranford Garcia’s work has or will soon appear in publications such as Boxcar Poetry Review, SoFloPoJo, Mom Egg Review, Psaltery & Lyre, Dialogist, several anthologies, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her first chapbook, Stunt Double, was published in 2016 through Finishing Line Press. She is the current Poetry Editor for Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought and a SAHM of three in Acworth, Georgia. Read more of her work at elizabethcgarcia.wordpress.com
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