from The Broom

POPPIES AND SCYTHE

Poppies: Do you remember the sky breaking from its billows like a blue tent torn from its spikes?

Scythe: I remember blueness, dents in the moon, spiders on the grass.

Poppies: Do you remember a woodpecker knocking Morse code into oak, the brook sounding its wooden bells like a warning?

Scythe: The whiskey always left me cold.

Poppies: You saw the boy’s shirt open like a sail, the girl’s hair snake down her hips into ropes undone. It was early morning, Venus still bright above the orchard. It just rained. Steam quilting two bodies entwined: summer, salted and honeyed.

Scythe: I remember a boy and girl in love, their glances. A jug of moonshine, a shared cigarette, caterpillars in the grass. 

Poppies: Do you remember his kiss growing harder and harder as if he were feeding?

Scythe: I remember his fear.

Poppies: Fear of what? 

Scythe: Of losing her. I know it from the hare crouched in the wheat, the long vessels of its ears popping with blood.

Poppies: Do you remember her arms pinned over her head, his fist twisting her wrist into a blue ribbon?

Scythe: I remember bruises on the boy’s face, how they bloomed like morning glories overnight.

Poppies: Remember the boy working on top of her like field machinery, pushing her up and up the grass until her hair anchored beneath her shoulders?

Scythe: No, what color was her hair?

Poppies: Red, like us. Remember her neck drawn back like a lamb’s neck is wrenched before slaughter, back so far we thought it might snap?

Scythe: I remember the hunter watching from behind trees. His red cap darting like a cardinal through the waterdark leaves.

Poppies: Do you remember the girl as she blew through us? Remember piercing her heel? The dollop of blood on your blade?

Scythe: Only the deer swiveling its eyes and ears far and away from us all.

SCYTHE

It’s dawn, the farmer
carries me by the throat.
There’s whiskey in his coffee, whiskey
in me. He loves the blueness,
the morning star dumb and silent.
He sings to her a nothing-song
about rain and harvest,
money and children,
the breasts of lonely wives.
Sometimes, I sing along, hating myself.
Sometimes, I pierce the skull of a hare,
causing swift and unexpected sleep.
He loves the field, the dander,
memories floating up, backlit
as dandelion seeds. Memory of being
a boy, horny in the wheat, then later,
the hunter’s wife—Oh! His hips,
he thinks, they still know how.
We sway and dip, swing low.
It is a whole-body weeping, a shiver
that ends in the wheat.
If he could have stayed young forever.
If summer was a lifetime. If he could fuck
the earth and change into a tree.
When the farmer grows tired, I am flung, 
I fly, and for a moment I see no difference
between myself and a bird.
He leaves me, of course, too drunk
to remember our love, and stumbles
home to beat the boy
out of the boy.

DEER AND RIFLE

DEER: At the creek, the hunter doesn’t see me. If I were a snake or a steel-jawed trap, I’d be his fate.

RIFLE: I’d be his crutch.

DEER: The girl’s red hair braided into fishtails, her swimsuit tossed like a spare organ, red and wet. He’s trailed her here. What part of the story do you write?

RIFLE: The hunter’s part. He watches to protect her. I’m sure of it.

DEER: Once, I made the mistake of walking freely in the orchard, got drunk on black plums split on the damp earth. Once, I jumped a wall to feast on almonds. Everywhere boundaries, everywhere fruit. Should the girl have stayed at home?

RIFLE: She would not.

DEER: The crows spark the June sky like pieces of flint, the hare breaks into a run. Does she see him when she stands from shallow water?

RIFLE: She doesn’t hide. The sun warms her breasts, lights up her copper triangle like a target.

DEER: The hunter holds the world in his scope, everything small and unaware.

RIFLE: Hearts beat in his crosshairs.

DEER: How does it feel to be his eye?

RIFLE: Terrible and beautiful—like an angel approaching from behind.

DEER: He wants my head on his wall, my pelt on his bed, to wear my rack like a velvet crown. Is love possession?

RIFLE: To be chosen is to be loved.

DEER: He’s no protector, no bearded angel.

RIFLE: I admit, I’ve seen him skin a hare mid-cry.

RIFLE

I dream of a steady wind
dismantling
the dovecote in silence.

I free.

I dream of a scythe
flung among
the poppies.

I try to forget death.

I dream of a hayfield
blowing
through the eyes
of bodies. 

Things grow in spite of me.

I dream of an angel
laid upon
a stretcher.

I live between realms.

I dream of a star
falling
into a wound. 

I am the wound.

I dream of all that is
pierced
released
Paradisiacal
and found.

POPPY FIELD 

We know it with our bright red heads 
churning in wind, our chorus of black tongues 
wagging at the moon—  

Off with their toes! Off with their heels! 
For what is crime but a hobbled secret. 

We’ve gathered the green-eyed facts, sorted 
the evidence like piles of flies.

We deliberate: Ordeal by water! 
Ordeal by fire! Ordeal by combat!  

We know this much—something bad happened 
to a boy or a girl, or to both of them, 
and to all of us 
once upon a time or tomorrow or today. 

You lie. You cry after it. But tragedy 
is a room of fixed furniture and lighting. 
A window stuck open like a mouth.  

You try to close it, cover it, choke it, 
but you wake each day 
to our rabid heads, shedding 
blue-black seeds 
across the land like breadcrumbs,  

leading the worst of you 
back to your own bloody field
and the dark bruise 
at the root of your tongue.

L.I. Henley was born and raised in the Mojave Desert of California. An interdisciplinary artist and writer, she is the author of six books including Starshine Road (Perugia Press Prize) and the novella-in-verse, Whole Night Through. Her art, poetry, and prose have appeared most recently in Adroit, Brevity, The Indianapolis Review, The Southeast Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Cincinnati Review, and The Los Angeles Review. Her personal essays on pain, illness, and the Mojave Desert have received national recognition including the Arts & Letters/Susan Atefat Prize and the Robert and Adele Schiff Award. She is the creator of Paper Dolls & Books. Find her at www.lihenley.com and on Instagram @lihenleyart.  

Kristin Bock’s second poetry collection, Glass Bikini, was published by Tupelo Press in December 2021. Her book, CLOISTERS, won Tupelo Press’s First Book Award and an Eric Hoffer da Vinci Eye Award. Her poem, “Gaslighter” was chosen for the Best American Poetry 2022. A Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow, she holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she teaches. Visit her at https://kristinbock.mystrikingly.com and follow her on Instagram @kbock777.