Adviced
When you call the man sure better play
pretty. Hold your lips like a yes, ball all
your bad beauties up in the lungs until
your breath is all you are. Don’t let
the sweet scare you into confessing
the body as a place you know better
than a stranger or a stethoscope, than
a plan bricklaid goddammit by God
almighty himself. Be a pretty girl, be
a gentle girl. Be a horse of a girl spooked
by her own mane. When you call the man
better be a baby holding limp the slip
of your two-steps behind the strongbox
of his back, the small of the cabinet
in history that fits you and your ribbons,
your white suit women, your wishes
to one day take your goddammit to god
almighty yourself. Be a sky of a girl
stripped to blues. Be a lawn of a girl
shaved up all the way. Be a beauty
of a girl stuffing the silences down
sister’s off-switch of throat. Learn the art
of switching in codes left red/purple red/
purple red/purple up the unpantsed glory
of a leg that called its steps its own and set off
grit-set on stomping its own grassed grave.
Here the man is first
class. He demands a beverage, he demands (in his
presence & colleagues & colloquial dress) his ice spherically & not
squarely. He is as outraged as orange, as what did he money
all this pay for anyway. He brands your list of bourbons, your last
long-scotch lovers, your breast left baldly weeping. He would like to wife
every woman (a Cornish hen kitchened, barestep footing) & every woman
once wed (he deepvoiced, he baritoned by command) should her wildness
fold, a napkin polite as a dinner party. He is both banquet & boss, he is
if anything what an animal dreams of electricity so (a canon of business
too casual to assist in emergency) he tiles every ceiling, glass-worshipping,
he’d pierce his own ear (& happily) for drumming she-sounds into words.
So Blessed
All the good mamas get saved, bathed
by the water washed by the blood
of Jesus, all the sweetest mamas are saved from their mama’s coupons,
clipping fingernails before arrest
warrants they claw, warning you
get too close you’ll taste this pistol, get
too close these bullets are eyes. All the
good mamas better when they best the bullet, aim like the iron girdling the
girth of a house white as bread
sandwiched in the kitchen behind a cabinet stocked with canned men.
Every good mama is the parent calling
teacher keep out of your chalk, bored through with arrows every Gospel
lessens unless there is a killing, a field
for the grace of the Lord’s lambs pastured, crushing cud & daggers are
as milk-easy as teeth. All the sweetest
mamas love a sparkle, love a let’s little see you girl all smiling, keep your
secrets & your figured hour glassed
alleluia by the iced grace sweating sweet as tea. Mamas save recipes from
Revelations for the coming of the
Lord as a fire tied to Sunday like a school. Mamas save their babies &
bank loans. Mamas save their shelves
& selves. Mamas know whose sleeves slither the buttons over scales, whose
hair raises hackles, unholy as the first
fall from heaven onto sulfured horns. Jesus may have loved the weak, but
the Lord knows mama knows better.
The blood of the sinner is a balm licking love unwickéd, & those wicked
with the wrong loves inside slip out of
her comfortable & into something meat, queerhung from the closet hook
& hummed. Mama, hear that wolf
howl. Hear your god-gift tongue & watch that sugar maple shiver, mama,
shake the silver straight from the fruit
strange hanging in the trees.
Emma Bolden is the author of medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press) and Maleficae (GenPop Books). Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, Gulf Coast, The Pinch, Prairie Schooner, Conduit, and TriQuarterly, among others. A 2017 NEA Fellow, she serves as Senior Reviews Editor for Tupelo Quarterly.