For Judy
Just Two Girls revisited
A bandaid on the road to stop the spread,
dogs process through their noses: goose turds, a seagull feather,
a flock of cancer cells flaps past. A day for cloud animals,
some top-heavy dragon glowers over maples chewed to lace,
that tree skeleton by the pond, chainsawed chunks hauled away
by crime scene techs. Rot from within.
A hornet checks for mail and that woman
you pass every day walks into the sun.
You float in your window boat, purple and turquoise waves
splay up the beach of your bones.
A mermaid’s tail evolves
beneath that sea,
a painful evolution
one scale at a time,
until you won’t remember
you once walked on two feet
when we will carry your words
in baskets, torn pages of paper birch
scattered on the water while
you climb into a broken-off
mushroom cap and paddle one-armed, East,
small dog on your lap.
Just when the sun breaks the horizon in half,
someone on the beach blinks, reaches for a phone, a camera,
but by the time
she lifts it to her eye,
all that remains of those two
girls kissing on the water is the south wind’s voice,
ripples circling like arms,
like a hug that embraces
this life
as long
as those arms
can hold it.
After the Hottest Heat Wave in Earth’s History
Piled sock wads and shed shorts mumble in corners.
Shoes stepped-out-of
shamble near doorways.
Drying towels smell of mold,
and heat stored in unexpected places,
a box of cookies exhales warmth when
you open the flaps.
You’ve been in the pool
in the shower,
kept your hair soaked,
run naked through the golf course sprinklers at dawn,
expect mushrooms to sprout from your navel.
Packets of neatly embalmed hibiscus blossoms
drop into puddles. Float, so many perfect, wrapped mermaids
as lovely dead as when they spread themselves in the sun
waiting for love’s juice.
You dove through walls of water,
cartwheeled across the garden
spouting books from every orifice,
heart pounded a distant engine
you could never quite hear,
but you felt it through your skin.
Yes, there are wonders, cactus buds,
blackberries bigger than nipples,
hummingbirds’ faces filled with gladiolus,
but
your friend is still dying. Tiny cells chase each other
up and down the highway, infiltrate her membranes,
ants in a sugar bowl. You keep driving even though
you can’t see the end,
even though the roar of water is so loud
you can’t hear the destination. You do your best
to arrive in time because that, the flower packets-
all there is.
A moment of lust blinked to ashes,
memory of a summer lake
where you two almost intersected
so many times
on a different planet
back when winters buried the castle on the hill
in deep
blue
snow.
After the Call When You Learn Your Friend, Sick at Least a Year, Has Brain Cancer
Your body heats up, skin hot enough to fry fish,
you and the dogs stumble into July dusk. Feathers hold
a baby’s face, a statue nestled among coneflowers.
Fireflies sparkle, grass whispers to the bottoms of your naked
feet. Sickle moon hooks your voice in your throat,
laughter, remember that squirt gun fight?
The lake birthed you—a woman walking a dog under
an orange sun—framed. Now the lake in your blood sleeps
on a shelf next to your head.
Kingfisher to the east cries, dawn,
a blue gill dies, you know this
as surely as a single cell divided
ten years ago. Camouflaged itself
with twigs, neighbors suspected nothing.
The dog barks at the raw scent of metastasis.
How to get your attention? You miss your old dog,
the one who trotted into a car fender to save your life.
****
You brave claws, reach for the biggest raspberry,
it tumbles into darkness. The unborn baby, feathered hands
flies across the garden. Juice stains her small face. You swear
you didn’t leave her in the
car. You pluck copulating beetles off roses, drop them
in a watering can to flush down the toilet.
You reach for the berry with a baby’s face, a cell divides,
skin hot enough to fry
extrudes feathers. Kingfisher dives,
the baby cries blood.
Dawn reflects in glass fragments
poured over grass, the sound of a father
smashing the windshield,
a beating heart.
Rachael Ikins is a 2016/18 Pushcart, 2013/18 CNY Book Award nominee, 2018 Independent Book Award winner, & 2019 Vinnie Ream & Faulkner poetry finalist. 2021 Best of the Net nominee, 2023 2nd place winner Northwind Writing Competition. A Syracuse University graduate. Author/illustrator of nine books in multiple genres. Her writing and artwork have appeared in journals world wide from India, UK, Japan, Canada and US.
