POETRY
Lexicon
by Noland Blain
“It’s no use mother dear, I can’t finish my weaving. You may blame Aphrodite, soft as she is, she has almost killed me with love for that boy.” - Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard My father doesn’t mention the pearl earring, the white roach he would have called queer as a boy. He no longer says it like that, a small mercy. I catch him glancing at my lipstick, and he hastens silence—bless him and his silence, his well-meaning pot lids over my soap-boxing, which must burn right through him, right to the gods of his boyhood: the ivory girlfriend sauntering through the mall in a short skirt, or else trapped in magazine pages beneath the boy-blue bed. How can I blame him for his age, we of different love religions: the Aphrodite I worship, rough as granite and with no slender wrists; all monument I had to coax, carve, and name from the deep wood closet. When I am home with my father, she is vacant from this temple. Godless home, made godless house in smothered prayer, each of us pantomiming a frantic translation. Identity, I coo and touch his heart. Expression, I curl his hands around a pearl. I prattle about cuffed jeans, gold brooches, the pink stiletto I see in my dreams. My father shifts his weight on the sofa, jokes: What are you doing with a knife in this house?
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