Three Poems by Mary Anne Griffiths

Under the eighth house of sky I swallow a pill of silver light, turn inside out, skeleton for skin. Its waning crescent hooks into my soft insides. Implants. The sun leaves me hungry hiding under stones, gravid with moon’s weight. Only night contains my patience as I crawl out hauling instinct rich in stinger lore. Skin cannot hold a story long enough. It must be shed like a primal revenant hollowed of its urge, outlived of it use. I peel away old narratives, stubborn vengeance and all that remains is the thought of your careless step as the last crack of my shell rears a poised poison to strike back.

standing naked in the fields beetles and locusts fell from the ears of corn uncovering my body hailstorms and lightning turned and fled they said I soured the wine walked about the streets with a wild look no bread making, no lamp lighting sitting in the darkness of the small grass hut while the others pushed plates of yam through the small door with their slender fingers squatting in prayer and pain I howled all night and left rubies in the snow

A lot of women have gone missing, fallen off the face of the earth, their surnames lost like jewelry on a dark beach. Others, masquerading, pull the name of their husbands over their bodies like a cloak against the past. Some are suspended at this very moment making promises they cannot begin to fathom led down the aisle by one man, then ushered out by another with no time in between to come up for air. They carry their new names like purses they will later leave in a bathroom stall, forget like a pair of sunglasses at the seaside, where they have travelled to find themselves but return with fists only full of sand and the bottle washed up on the shore with no message inside.