Poetry Suite by Gina Vaynshteyn
“I don’t walk inside. I don’t watch the curtains
as the pale hands inside cry wolf.”
Poetry by Gina Vaynshteyn
+++
PROM QUEEN
When you were seventeen, you sighed into your mom’s nightgowns,
touched your hips through polyester as though you owned your bones.
You made your first boyfriend a peanut-butter banana sandwich, ordered him
to eat it in front of you and say you were beautiful. You took off
your t-shirt, watched as he grew more and more thirsty. He begged, but you
drank your glass of whole milk slowly, licking your upper lip, pressing the
sweaty glass to your forehead. Summers in the Midwest are breathless.
You took to lakes, even tadpoles knew to hide under swollen algae.
At night, you burned churches because you loved the way smoldering
wood smelled, how stained glass screamed right before it shattered.
Now you visit graveyards like Mother Theresa tending her children.
You claw at dirt, sprawling above girls who helped you zip up your fuchsia dress.
This is the place you believe in. They will not steal your plastic crown.
They will not let you grow sallow. You hear music. You sway into wet grass.
+ + +
ISIS
I gave birth to you in the desert, a daughter who will learn to swim
in empty lakebeds, to suck on cacti in place of milk. I pulled you out
myself, gave you a name every wild thing will remember. I sheared the cord
with a hatchet, swaddled your pink body in Daisy Dukes. Soon, you will lord
over every passing station wagon on its way to Vegas. When you turn
thirteen, you will have a hard body that talks back, will grow lonely
in that trailer I left you in, rivers will find their way back to you, carrying fish
and trash.
Find lust in the assuring tumbleweeds, the sand storms, the way scorpions leer.
+ + +
PROOF
I kissed you until I burned the roof
of my mouth, until there was no sugar
left in the house.
Doctors gave me your MRI scans. I colored
in the crevices of your brain with charcoal
crayons. I hung them up like curtains.
They let in light: my walls glowed skeletons.
Copies of your insides kept me awake
for days, I daydreamed about bleach. Hospitals
perched on cliffs. I brewed fresh coffee pots
every single day, brought you mail so you could
see your name on white envelopes, held mirrors
up to your face so you could remember. No matter
what I did, our mouths still tasted like ashes.
+ + +
MURDER HOUSE
It’s the first day of spring. I walk to our old house.
I am barefoot and possessed; I wear our mother’s
apron, it still smells like sourdough, like wet
hands grasping our necks in the bathtub.
Our bicycles are gone, the red shutters didn’t peel
much. I know rust would still be your favorite color.
The truck, the nails, the tool shed, I touch everything,
bless it three times under my breath; I cradle the wet
dirt, smear it under my eyes like I used to when we
played war.
I don’t walk inside. I don’t watch the curtains
as the pale hands inside cry wolf.
+ + +
Header image courtesy of collagist Ashkan Honarvar. To view more of his images and read an interview with the artist, go here.
Gina Vaynshteyn works on the Internet and sometimes teaches writing in Southern California. Her poetry has been published in PANK, decomP, Four Way Review, The Legendary, and some more. If you like what you see here, you can follow her on twitter @ginainterripted or tumblr: here.