Poetry

Karla Cote photo

By

Emily King

1939 France – 2017 Charlottesville, Va

My grandmother

French in WWII

Nazis leering

“Hey little blond one, come here!”

3 months walking-no soap-

hard bread for dinner made

with dust, string and flour.

Nomad teenager, bomb dodger,

no home to return to.

Only match sticks piled high

but it ended eventually, eventually.

My grandmother

French in America

Nazis in streets

3 hours away-jeering-

in high definition.

Flashback senior, shocked spectator,

reality now a house of cards.

It teeters!-It teeters!-

and it has only just begun.

Lilacs in a burning field

Lilacs in a burning field

are more sincere, more chaste

than your dandelion head

wasted now, cobwebbed and seeded

and when you appeared, a sunflower

rising above my horizon

I was a daisy

plucked bald.

When you aligned your body with mine

and our shadows became one in the moonlight

my soul was a clover, collapsed and cowering

in the corner of your tobacco stained bedroom.

I was sure infinity was reality

a redwood obstinate in the face of disease.

But I was much too vulnerable

baby’s breath on the tongue of a giant

and instead of reverence you desecrated me

Spitting out your seeds instead of

Receiving my holy communion.

My wildfire desire you did not put out

for the water from my vase you drank long ago.

But when the embers died

and I was an ashed palm

your forehead, I did not adorn.

My love for you, you did not bare

and Instead I was swept into your ashtray

A flower no more.

Emily King

Emily King is a young poet of 23 with a B.A. in English. At the age of 14, inspired by a reading of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, she became dedicated to honing her craft.

A wide range of topics serve as her inspiration, including lost luggage, morality, irrigation fields, ugly therapist offices and the birth and death of relationships.

She is currently working on a chapbook inspired by a road trip through the American Southwest and can be found on twitter by her handle: @sob_dylan.