Alchemy by Mara Cregan

ALCHEMY Curran O’Neill

“The strength of a woman is not measured by the impact that all her hardships in life have had on her; but the strength of a woman is measured by the extent of her refusal to allow those hardships to dictate her and who she becomes.” ― C. JoyBell C.

November The Moon Speaks Babee Living Goddess Fruit Salt This is Ambition Just Like Honey Haiku Giant Woman Babycakes The Girls of My Youth Hiero Far Longer Than Forever Pele Poetic Influences

TABLE OF CONTENTS

pg. 4

pg. 5

pg. 6

pg. 7

pg. 10

pg. 12

pg. 13

pg. 14

pg. 16

pg. 17

pg. 19

pg. 20

pg. 21

pg. 22

pg. 23

pg. 24

November It must/ve been a girl—twilight ruby, a co/met flashed across the roof of our house. Flames hit your lip—a kiss unruly, untame, a child not marked, yet she is sour. Body of stars, lit like Neptune, a harsh blue in/ferno. Many tears fell to dawn, into the caves filled in/digo—a marsh colored in light. Will you wipe her old con to o/blivi/on so she’ll rise, will you ignore the sparks e/scape wallowing eyes rather, observe the girl exhaust anew to ash. At least heavens reward demise. Or perhaps that was no girl but a whis/ per, glowing ne/on blue—naïve bliss.

The Moon Speaks

“Wolves are just women who fell in love with the moon instead of men.” -‐-‐Amrita C.

My fingers tangle in the push of waves, jellyfish like little wet ghosts swim frantically from my reach. A girl, my child, carries her swollen knees to the water in hopes of being swallowed. I tuck her small head on my shoulder, her skin so cold my goosebumps turn to craters. Place her on the shore under my light, I watch over her sleeping body. With morning the sun’s vapor hot on my face, I’m hidden behind a veil of clouds. Still, when she wakes the girl looks to me, eyes sparkling like a storm. And I can feel it, her moonbrains have got her drunk on love. She crawls into a cave and sheds her human body like the peel of a banana, as if it were nothing. When night rips away the mask of day, I’m left naked. The stars twinkling illuminate my scars. She finds me, tilts her head towards the sky like a morning glory but howls like an animal. If you listen closely, you’ll notice it’s the cry of a girl who never knew the meaning of trust. A girl who left her humanity rotting on the beach shore. I glimmer, the only gesture I can offer. For the moon has never answered her children’s cries.

Babee

Imitating Sonia Sanchez

To the homegirl who liked to wear her hair up high, the pitter/patter of your eyes still leaves me breathless. In summer your words fell like mangoes off your tongue, Babee, you sure got it good, you said. Thinking of rain. But I could never hold your attention for long. You were swollen from the ache in your back, seven long years of dragging feet to mountain peaks to bear your fruit. Sleep was a luxury you could not afford. Still, rockets dance in your eyes with wild tails of orange and red. Babee, you sure got it good, you said. Thinking of stars. Let Autumn drape you in her blow. The explosions in your heart are deaf—a two headed snake. And the holes in your clothes are heavy. Mother Mary will only suck you dry. Babee, you sure got it good, you said.

Nepal’s Living Goddess thighs like a deer Blushing from the grains in her hands, the five-‐year old is taken to the royal court, where the gardens sprout candy colored orchids sticking out their tongues for rain. chest like a lion 32 perfections must be found on this girl, Queen searches her skin for blemishes. Eyes like a hungry man digging for food, she tilts the girls head towards the sun. eyelashes of a cow Oil lamps illuminate the calm washing over. Durga holds the child’s cheeks like sweet plums, embracing her small body until they are one. And she can feel her, like the large heart of a woman beating against her fragile ribs. neck like a conch shell Now that she is Taleju, they paint vermillion on her forehead bright as poppies. Line her eyes with black

to wink away demons. sturdy as a banyan tree Feel the certainty like a ghost, Durga guiding the storm of prayers to answers. The girl will know when to refuse a wish— her anger like an earthquake, violent and haphazard. voice of a crystal In the aftermath, houses sit in piles of wood like bones, ancient statues littered on the ground like fallen fruit. The palace still intact reminds those of Taleju’s protection. Though later, cracks are found in the walls like the small veins of a child. and forty teeth When she starts to bleed, they rub the vermillion from her forehead and start looking for the next. At the door, Durga’s last kiss washes Taleju away. An entire existence let’s go of a young girl’s hand, leaving that child in a world of mortals. And it’s almost like

she was never divine. Later in the mirror, she finds specks of red like stardust in her hair and knows it was real. So use your thighs like a deer, and run.

Fruit Leaning against one another in alleyways, drunk on the moon heat still creeped up our skirts like shooting stars, burning patches of our skin. We walk home, my girl and I, two swollen cheeks the size of mangos. In my kitchen we slice mangos like lattice, nudging one another at the hips falling into the juice lit by the light of the moon. And I’m burning under your gaze like the name under my skirt. Mom eyes the fruit stains on my skirt but says nothing, holding the mango skins with her thumb and forefinger like they’re burning, the blush of it a withering inferno. Another silent disappointment born from the moon of her womb. Out of the two I’m the daughter who sent her voice to the heavens only to have it come crashing down to the outer-‐skirts of her body. How many moons did she carry my weight, belly the swollen red of a mango? She didn’t get enough rest before another one came along, all too familiar were the burns. But even she knows nothing will stop the burning that’s charred my ribs, small organs too. So she moves on, plays another song pretending to iron her shirts. We leave her house, acid bubbling around the mangos still inside our stomachs. The moon hidden behind a papaya sunrise. Moon, our mother, wearing a mask of burning fog. My girl’s earrings push against her cheek like mangos hanging from a tree, jangling as she somersaults to my side. Sweat has already made craters in our shirts, but we both can’t stand to not be so close to one another. We buy mangos again, this time the size of the moon so we can make another mess burning

in the eyes of others, too proud to mention the stains on our skirts.

Salt In her blanket of pills and sparkling spit, poor broken china doll. Under the lamplight of candy hearts her veins are sucking glitter. Her audience sits dumbfounded, sharing a lemon and glass. Dust crowds the carpet like fallen freckles. Mother and Father flash their broken teeth above a bald head. Naked offerings. Ribcages like gills, slimy and choking. Soak up the bubbles like sponges. Through velvet fingertips, feel what is gone/what is there to stay. Peel your chipping red nail polish. Comb your blond matted hair. Bat your seashell eyes and lick your lips. Go to sleep/Go to sleep/Go to sleep. Leave all your salt behind.

This is Ambition Onika: n. warrior. She walks on stage, catching diamonds in her hips and the shine of her hair. Eyelashes flutter with a suspense behind her thank you and I love you. How far has she climbed since she shed her cotton candy colored hair and titanium skeleton, taking so much from her skin. Revealing truths; an abortion, a father’s abuse, pills n’ potions—leaving behind holes where people pry their fingers in, trying to force them ever bigger. She gives herself over and over, bears son after son, smiling for the masses. And still there’s no credit where it’s due. How many walls must a black woman break before she is recognized? Before they stop asking her about her ass and start rewarding her technique. She has never been one woman, she is Nicki, she is island girl, she is business, she is poetry, she is mother, she is God, she is Onika, she is warrior. So call to them, Queen who refuses to be silenced. Ask them again, What’s good?

Just Like Honey

Based on the Hindu epic, Ramayan.

“She looked like, if you bit her, milk and honey would flow from her.” -‐-‐Franz Kline

BIRTH OF THE MOON The moon crashes to earth, buried in a womb of dirt and worms. Cracking it open like an egg, a king pulls out a baby girl covered in golden yolk. Her screams are muted by thunder overhead. Sita, the princess born from lightning. DEVOTION TO A BLUE-‐SKINNED GOD Ten years later and she’s eating honey with her hands, running from her sisters like a fawn not yet familiar with its legs. Calmed only by the god with blue skin, his idol perfumed heavy with sandalwood. Her eyes send him gentle kisses. FALLING FOR A GODLY PRINCE At sixteen she’s lost in her own garden, her sisters urging her to look for the prince with lotus eyes. Hidden behind fox brush orchid, she finds them glimmering like the sun, looking through her own large pupils. They drown in each other. THE GODLY PRINCE WINS SITA’S HAND Kings with heavy stomachs gape at the brush burns on their hands. Ram, a prince, stands at their feet, smile transfixed on Sita. The flower garland sits starry in the princess’s hands, her nervous palms crushing the small white petals. HONEYMOON IN AYODHYA From her newlywed’s window, the people dancing with oil lamps look like fireflies in the night. Sitey, Ram says. He holds her cheek like a conch shell. Sita embraces him, the fear in her legs washed away under his glow. PRINCE RAM BANISHED FROM AYODHYA Banished to the forest, Sita trades in her sheer veils for head coverings bright as papaya. She walks hand in hand with her husband through the brush. Candy-‐colored birds scream as if to warn them, Leave while you still can. KIDNAPPED BY RAVAN The ten-‐headed demon holds Sita over his shoulders like a dead animal after a hunt. Her cries for her husband aren’t heard so high in the clouds. She drops anklets and earrings like breadcrumbs, praying that Ram will find them. WAITING FOR HER BELOVED’S RESCUE Trapped in a floral prison, Sita refuses to eat. She bruises easily, purple marks rising like little planets on her skin. Ravan visits daily, his eyes the size of sweet plums each time she refuses his bed. Shivering, she tries to remember her husband’s face.

TEST OF PURITY When Ravan lies dead from Ram’s arrows, Sita runs across the bloody ground, through the great flower of fire separating her from her husband. He checks her weak body for scars, but her skin refused to burn. PRINCESS SITA BANISHED FROM AYODHYA The sun embraces the moon one last time, his eyes like pebbles at the bottom of a lake. Thousands of hands rip Sita away, their voices high pitched screeching. Ram is a fool to let an impure woman be his queen! Impure! Impure! Impure… ABANDONED Carried into a forest of neon trees, she’s left alone. Taken once again from her husband, there are no more tears to shed. Impregnated with light, the pain in her pelvis shakes throughout her whole body. It is all too real. BIRTH OF FIRE Like her skin is melting, lava gushes out of her. The vermillion ooze cools to black ash, fire still glowing through the cracks. Helplessly she digs through the rock and wipes clean twin baby boys, their skin blue as the sky. THE SUN MEETS HIS SONS When the boys have grown half her height, Sita walks her sons born from fire to her husband’s door. Tucks the hair behind their seashell ears and kisses their foreheads. For today they meet the life they were born to. SITA SAYS GOODBYE Ram holds Sita’s hands tighter, as if that will change her mind. I’m no longer your queen. I’ve been judged twice by your people, I will not be judged again. Love our sons as I would, were I here. And know that you are always a part of me. THE MOON RETURNS TO MOTHER EARTH The earth cracks open once again, like the lightning she was born to. Sita sinks away, her lotus eyes buried in mulch. Sita, a blue inferno curls back into the moon. The tides sink at this new weight as oil-‐slick fish blink at the rapid fire in the sky.

Haiku Diamonds caught by the curls in her hair, she shakes them and thunder crashes.

Giant Woman

Based on the Inuit goddess Sedna “But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.” -‐Hans Christian Anderson

Carrying you in a canoe dark and skinny like vanilla bean, the neighbor boy pushed you off the edge making his knees buckle because, what good was an orphan if no one would marry her? You clung to the boat, fingernails like crescent moons cracking on cherrywood. He grabbed his axe like a cross and let it come smashing down, chop chop chop Three fingers fell soft to the ocean floor like the meat of a banana. They sucked at the embryo of your bone, dissolved and regrouped into the bud of a whale, seal, fish. Your eyes became black and uninviting like deep space. Nubs where your fingers used to be spread like the wing of a bat, the color of burnt sugar. Your flippers came crashing down, pop pop pop Betrayed, you swallowed men and their homes in one crash of a wave, your body grew fat, skin indigo. It was the first time people feared you —They tried to calm the sharp tooth of your tide, combed the knots of your coral curls with fishing nets and pulled rotten debris from your navel. But how could one calm a girl who couldn’t even cry? You swam, came dashing down, drop drop drop Hid under the ocean’s wreath of night and touched what was left of your hand to your face. You’d almost forgotten you had a face, that you were ever a person. You couldn’t see how your skin sparkled purple like the inside of an oyster, nor the pearl growing inside you. You aren’t anything. You’re nothing. The thoughts came slashing down, stop stop stop But in your heart you felt it was true, it had been hiding like ghosts under a sheet. Your life ended when he pushed you off of that boat. You were just a voice that no one could hear,

a drifting hollow husk. Your eyes bright as sea anemones, strange creatures that glowed in the depths—cracked like an egg. Since you were a baby, crying had always been a sign that you were alive.

Babycakes Sixteen and ashamed of my skin blushing hot coals at the tiniest things, you held my cheeks, tilted my face towards yours and told me I looked like a peach the way my face swelled pink. It made me feel pretty, the ugly truth sticking out like a neon bone— Still a rotten fruit, I fell so long ago I’ve forgotten what it is to be ripe. Even so, you bit into me, ripped out the bruises on my sides, spit my pit onto the hot concrete like a loose tooth. Looked at me as if through x-‐ray with a moony smile like it was nothing. I never met anyone like you, so willing to suck out the poison and open me up like a valentine. I dream of you as a child, head heavy with sleep on my shoulder as I carry you to bed. Tiny hands wrapped around my neck, I wake up molten, blushing from hunger.

The Girls of my Youth The girls of my youth were a fantasy. Holding my hand through dark alleys with cheeks that grew bright as sparklers. They spun me around on shag carpeting to the heartbeat of their broken records, filling my lungs with marshmallow fluff, sweet and suffocating. Under the covers we pressed our cold feet against one another’s thighs and talked about the boys, who laughed at us in the dark somewhere far off and cold. Jumping off swing sets trying to break bones and bloom bruises; we braided one another’s hair in concentrated beats. We wore crowns of smog and glittered ourselves like opals, buying one another hotdogs and kissing cheeks. Past laughing headstones we spat heavy like sap. Tucking away remains in shiny boxes the color of peaches. At night we sat in silence watching the moon, our tears melting with the snow. Bitter emptiness dripping from our brows, smashing pumpkins and setting off rockets only made us smile for so long. Popping bubbles with our noses and screaming through paper windows. Setting my underpants on fire and undressing luna. Underneath doily covered tables hiding sticky knees trying to muffle our laughter, Mother always saw right through us. Squishing my goose bumps like bubble wrap reciting quotes under quivering trees. They told me I was beautiful. They bloomed in front of me like a valentine without hesitance, shrieking ghosts caught on loose nails from the window screen, laughing at empty. Fluorescent lights x-‐rayed our bodies revealing neon bone, which we covered with blinking stars, milky Sundays. Like a roll of film burning spots on screen, their image fades—magic vanishing act. The butterflies breathing nostalgia drop dead in my stomach. All that is left is longing and the vapor of lost things. A pistol birthing smoke. And I love, love, loved them.

Hiero She shook midnight from her body like sand caught in between the folds of her skin. If her mouth should open, surely she’d choke on the milk and honey of her words, shining with something lost. Underneath her limestone complexion is bandaged vanilla bean skin. Cold and wrinkly, she was tucked into bed without a kiss goodnight. For years she was surrounded by gold and prayers to Osiris that hung heavy at the top of her grave like sleeping bats. In her lonely underworld, her only visitors were grave robbers, they shoved her alabaster skin open like scarab wings separating her head from her body. They stuffed their bags with gold and jewels and left without a kiss goodnight. She sent shooting stars to Isis, begging that she take her paper wings and gather the dust from her broken body to make her whole again. But what’s fixed will always be broken. Hollow and forgotten, a diamond in the rough, she is tucked into bed by glittering sand dunes.

Far Longer Than Forever Under this bruised rib hummingbirds beat their fat wings, scared of the diamonds I have caught in my throat trying to write you this poem. Surprised at my own helplessness, your words spill comets at the cusp of my heart. It’s always been this way—me, weak at the knees and you, taping me back together again. I’ve tried to be stronger for you, bend the arm holding onto you until the bone snaps—but the dogs always drool on my thighs and I come running back. You are the closest I’ve come to God, your heart-‐shaped face shining down on me is all that is good and pure. The honey running through your veins makes your cheeks glow like pomegranates as you comb my hair. I long to web myself into you, an attempt to fill the space between us. Because I’m sure your grace will take you far from me, into the belly of a monster whose insides are prettier than mine.

Pele

Black hair/cooled lava sits weightlessly by your starry-‐eyes. A mood ring of tresses burns your scalp persimmon. Cinnamon girl, sweet in context bitter on one’s tongue, sing sorrow/ blue flames to the popsicle colored parrots hiding in neon trees. By the sea, your volcano an open wound impregnated with light— you’re trapped in an open aviary. Kiss lonely cherry lips to hardened rock. The stones candied suns under your glow, blazen newborns press close to your skin. You breathed life into raw coals, your children melt away your solitary life, fill the hollowness of your bones. You’ve been empty so long, devouring all you could reach— brimming, you don’t notice the first rain. But your babies do. They tower over you to keep the acid from bubbling on your flamed cheeks, from the atomic bomb of storm, closing the lid of your prison. Their faces fade black, charred spirits enveloping their mother in a film of gloom. You try to kiss firecrackers on their chubby heads but the echo of silence brings you to your knees, try to curse the azure mirror now blocked by the bodies of your creation. Oxygen fizzing to dust, your last ribbon of flame reflects the decaying hologram of the girl you once were.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Francesca Lia Block Lorna Dee Cervantes Sonia Sanchez Terrance Hayes Natalie Diaz

POETIC INFLUENCES