The Shine Journal
Exceptional Flash, Poetry, Art and Photography!
Three From Shannon Deep
After the Wake
When he died
we stayed up
talking,
sitting cross-legged on the laundry room floor,
the braided rug the only space
not occupied by sleeping bodies,
your family strewn about the soft places in the house
like shoes.
The cheap light
painted you pale
and tired
and as you laid your head in my lap
I thought that at any second you might burst.
And I wondered
how much of me it would take
to dam up this cellar storm drain
so I could catch your grief as it rolled
coolly across my knees.
In the morning
I looked at your grandmother's wrist
to see if she still wore his watch,
the cold gray heart weighing down
her hand. She wielded it like a pendulum,
casting it over the table, reaching for
a tissue,
the box, buried
in the crowd of food; the only sign
a man has died.
Breakfast with Jane Goodall
(Jane suffers from prosopagnosia, a neurological condition which impairs
the recognition of human faces.)
She asks for the half-and-half
and stirs her coffee,
holding the spoon delicately like a twig.
She is just as plain
as she is in the picture on her book jacket,
her hair the same khaki color as safari clothes,
as sun-bleached lion fur.
Today, though, she is wearing an oversized sweater,
the color of which makes me think burnt umber
even if that's not what the color is called.
It's my imagination,
but her jeans look like they've been washed in fast-running
rivers,
pummeled with water-polished stones
and rinsed with water so cold
you'd never guess all the horrifying bacteria that live there.
But gone are the days when she must have done her laundry like that,
crouching on the soft banks of the Gombe,
the sun stinging the back of her neck
as she scrubbed monkey shit out of her clothes.
I cannot imagine this woman trekking through the jungle,
crouching behind bushes with leaves the size of her leg,
silencing the whisper of her pencil as she watched and wrote
and wrote and watched the chimpanzees,
always in danger of their sudden turns of mood,
their heavy knuckles,
their poison saliva and mummy teeth.
She seems too fragile,
seated across the table from me, staring
unmindfully out the window, the sunlight in her eyes.
I begin to wonder if it was easier for her there,
in Tanzania,
living where she didn't have to place a name
across each forehead she encountered.
Where every face had the same cliffed brow,
the same welling eyes.
Maybe they all looked different
just to her.
If she saw among them the same dynamics of visage
you or I might see at a birthday party. The same
nuance and variation, the same hardness or silent appeal
that we root out in the faces of those we love.
I think she must feel the same sort of panic
here in this Denny's
that I would feel sitting amongst the chimps,
trying to breathe naturally,
knowing the sameness of them and me,
and still feeling utterly alone.
The Names of Flowers
I never thought I was the sort of person
to remember the names of flowers.
But as I pass I drip dew on crocuses
and cowslips. I do not remember now
how long it is that I have been gone¯
only that a season is ending. All else
is lost in the blackening of dying
grass and small, brittle birds.
I do not remember myself now,
but god, I could tell you the color
of every insect I've ever seen
crawling on my geraniums.
I am sure they will find me
with tent worms in my hair,
beetles bedded under my eyelids,
sorry that I've crushed the dragon snaps
and forgotten to cull the weeds again.
By that time the pearly wild onions
will have pushed through the skin
of my palms, a carpet of violets
triumphing over my belly, soft
as eider down. I will be something
people are surprised they remember,
the sudden name of a flower,
the precise number of petals
in the final gardenia, the white sky.
Click the pics to meet the members!
Email TSJ: Editor: Pamela Tyree Griffin
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