The Evolution of Enormity, by Savannah Sloane

Posted on October 2, 2019

unfocused black and white checkered floor seen

through poor eyesight: spectacles long lost

you see her, Mother, cut through sunflower stems with rusty scissors

her ocean of hair sways daringly in the manmade breeze of the cheap rotating fan

in the bedroom, you apply bark for wallpaper

life, for you, a Monet painting

peach acrylic paint singes

into your nostrils

abandoned car idles, driver’s door ajar, in a vacant

snowstorm

aroma of gas and metal,

snow covers bloodstains of the ones who presented you

a single cupcake lit by a match (it took three attempted matches before one would take)

scratch pad abrasions make you itch all over

a silent birthday song sung by a room of tongueless nobodies

mouths smack, but no words come out

you blow out your single candle, a gust

that disrupts the hush: room, fades to black

cactus makes skewers

of your blueberry stained fingertips

Mother lays upside

down, adorned in violet lace that hugs, on a velvet armchair

her hair caresses the hardwood floors that you carved

around her numb body

you paint a whale on the seafoam

brick wall and smile a orange-red lipstick teeth-stained smile

that tastes like the crayons you weren’t supposed to eat as a kid

dusty moth flaps wings in slow-motion on your tongue

single cupcake baked with salt instead of sugar

she licks her thorn pricked finger and you can taste it, too

*The Sixty-Four, best poets of 2018, The Black Mountain Press*