New poems from Raven Lee
Red delicious
Back then it was always
the same. Insides tuned
to a melancholic B minor.
Flavor sinking into nothing. Holes
from one worm or another. Skin,
like the plastic tags you aren’t
supposed to remove
with teeth, but I always do.
Stuck now, like a complaint
between incisors. Perfectly good,
you always said
as you used the paring
knife to remove browning cones
of exit wounds.
Teaching me to be sated
by what is available—
no matter how rotten.
Now at the store
I never see red delicious.
Mounds of Jonagold, Empire, Cortland
and if I am lucky, Ambrosia, Cosmic Crisp
and Matsu fill my bag.
Honeycrisp is my staple.
In the fall they get so big
we divide them
into two or three meals.
Their insides snap, skin
yields, invites me into a
satisfaction you never allowed
either of us. Turns out,
an apple can be
everything. The fall, the return,
the invitation.
Remodel
Finally, you get down to it
the bones
and see it all.
The ghosts that danced here,
simmering pots of sauce,
neatly cut carrots, ears, furrowed brows,
small things born on counters,
gesticulation of the day over a sink of dishes,
voices echoing, threading silken
webs of relatedness.
Now there is only studs,
and evidence of all you tried.
Patchwork builds. Clashing
eras. Stitched edges bitten
by rust. Need dancing
with desperation. You were
Making It Work.
The skeleton is there
waiting for the layout.
So much could happen.
But now the scars
are exposed and ringing.
Distress in the wounded walls
the pang in chalky plaster.
You have to sit
in the emptiness.
The soft pounding of blood
through the veins of this place.
When it hits the old pain
and sears
your breath is suspended.
What can be and what has been
naked and pulsing.
The echoes are coming in waves
nudging voices out of your skin.
Who could sleep in this place
where death and creation are sparring?
New Motherless Mother
It is a flesh time,
warm,
hot, in fact,
sweat popping
on my forehead,
skin of breast
gliding against
abandoned belly.
His cries are my metronome.
I rock to his rhythm.
I long for it to be easy.
It isn’t. I want to know
I am indeed
human. That I know things.
That my body knows
these human things.
A bridge of three weeks
we inch across.
I bleed, peel, doubt, cry.
I ice tender nipples
making one more feeding
possible.
My shoulders, arms fraught
with the knowing of pain,
bring him over,
I tell my husband.
I am ready.
It shouldn’t hurt, they keep saying.
But it does.
On the other side of the bridge,
We are an ecosystem.
Bodies in conversation.
Ancient knowing beyond mind.
I find belonging’s
raw materials.
Something cracks
my heart. I begin to know.
I have not had a metronome.
Where that beat should be
there is only muddle.
Our rhythm will stitch me,
beat by beat,
to this world,
this human body,
where I thought
I was only a guest.
RAVEN SC LEE lives on Wy-East (Mt Hood, Oregon) where she
spends her time writing, hanging out in the forest, and throwing
funky pots. Raven’s essays and poetry have appeared in Under the
Gum Tree, Eunoia Review, One Art, Amethyst Review, Honeyguide
Literary, and Hip Mama. Raven is on a hiatus from her career as a
psychologist and therapist trainer.
