Elizabeth Howard, US

 

 

Haiku   sidewalk café the aroma of coffee and beignets lures even the pigeons     super discount store gulls circling the shiny metal sea     Free Verse   Uncle Billy   William Hankins. Why, that’s Uncle Billy. Grandma’s brother. I forgot he was buried here straight across from Grandma and Grandpa. Think I’ll put buttercups on his grave, too. Uncle Billy nearly worried us to death. Never worked a lick, claimed it made him dizzy. He wandered around living off first one then another. Showed up with no warning, stayed for weeks, ate everything in sight. Once he ate a chunk of apple-stack cake Grandma had baked for Mrs. Watkins’ wake. Grandma was fit to be tied. Uncle Billy claimed he had lumbago. Said he couldn’t sleep on ary bed we had cept the featherbed in the room Grandma had set up for the preacher. My brothers and me got the idea to play a trick on him. We found a wild tomcat at the barn and fed him cow’s milk till he was sorta tame. The coldest night ever was, we trapped him, him fighting tooth and claw. We were scratched to pieces, but we didn’t give up. We gorged him on bacon rinds, put him at the foot of the bed, fluffed up the feathers around him. After a whopping supper, Uncle Billy yawned, stretched, and headed off to bed. Pretty soon we heard the cat yowl. Uncle Billy squalled and ran out in his long johns. He was white as a ghost, crying and shaking. Grandma and Grandpa feared he’d have a stroke. They helped him to a chair and calmed him down. Grandpa cleared his throat, Grandma frowned, her black eyes flashing sparks. We shooed the cat out and crept to bed. We could not sleep. Our scratched arms stung, and we knew tomorrow our legs would sting from a peach tree switch. The buttercups are lovely here on Uncle Billy’s grave, but I can’t let him off that lightly. For my brothers, off fighting a war they didn’t start for once, I break off a peach tree limb and add it to his bouquet.     A Mythical Garden   at first light she glides across the swale full skirts damp with dew gathering branches of Thor’s oak, tree of thunderbolt and lightning; Yggdrasil, the gallows tree; the bloody yew of Uppsala; and Glastonbury thorn, the staff that blooms     Rhonwen Cordelia Weatherstone   Mother died giving birth. Her last breath was my name—Rhonwen Cordelia— though no one ever called me that. Daddy called me Delia. In a few days, Mona Lee—she wolf, dragon lady— came to help out. In a few weeks, Daddy married her. When his back was turned, she called me Hell Kitten, Devil Bitch, Death Star. She pinched, slapped, pulled hair, sent me to bed without supper. After years, and still no child, she mixed a potion in the cellar, poured it in Mama’s rosebud teacup, placed a mint leaf on the saucer. She served it to Daddy with a slice of jam cake soaked in bourbon. I saw him drink it down, saw the gleam in his eyes. Soon she boasted of the child in her womb, looked at me with black eyes of hate. When she came to me bearing the rosebud teacup, dregs like spider fuzz eddying in the lurid broth, I clamped my mouth shut. She wrenched my thumb till it dangled like a withered chicken’s foot. I could not help myself. I drank all of it. Now I lie here forgotten, no stone, only a scrap of slat scribbled with a spike— DELIA.