(i have nothing to offer)
i. my grandmother’s cookbook
there needs to be more
oregano. oregano
in everything, blood
oregano. oregano blood.
pickled turnips
are a red meal
like blood matted
in the damp hay of her hair
and your fingerprints
stained pink from beets,
the artificial color you wash away
in handfuls of untamed duckweed.
ii. my grandmother’s cookbook
i have ash on my legs,
my legs that have too many ankles.
i hold a tissue paper body
as long as i can,
or until i must exhale.
she was beautiful
and then she died
and was still beautiful.
have you ever excused yourself
to an empty room
just to whisper oregano?
Good Weather for Waiting
I was taught to walk with properly placed kneecaps
long before I learned to boil mint leaves,
to make water whisper s as in choice.
Even if we could be like starlings
there would be too many bodies
and I’ve begun to realize
I still can’t talk about some things.
I describe myself as a tree that sleeps
during the day and wanders at night in skins
but all anyone sees is an open-mouthed girl
who breathes but doesn’t understand
the shape of her own diaphragm.
I lose myself over and over
to my grandmother’s rose-petalled
silverware, to my father’s slippery belly—
All I’ve done so far is wait deep
in my own oceanic stomach.
For Softer Hands
How could I have asked for them more
gently, gently or more feverish
than on my stained-glass knees
or hog-tied on a bed of leaf-litter,
dragged there by thin ankles? How
could I ask to be less knobby
when I dreamt of my grandmother’s hands
and begged them to ill-fit rings?
My palms out-measure my fingers;
not suited to piano chords
they can only wear small things,
are prone to slipping mittens like only a whisper
of a hand, called young or thanked
for being sufficiently warm, for feeling
the soft new buzz of gray hair growing in
on her shaved and sutured skull.
L Favicchia is PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Kansas and is the editor in chief of LandLocked. Their first full-length collection of poetry, boy little girl, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag. Their work can be found in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Rupture, Okay Donkey, and Post Road, among others.
Photo by Ari Roberts