mmccarthy161@gmail.com
Unfit
after a Hausa Bird Headdress
She was an acre of tinder waiting for the match, would set her hair on fire and slap it out fast, a dramatic dare and rescue the wrong side of sane.Followed by the smell of burning she marked everything she touched with fingerprints of ash.
She walked the alleys for hours. Those years most drinks came in glass bottles and every one she found she swung Hard and threw against a wall to hear it smash.No one saw or stopped her and she left behind a trail of broken glass.
Trees spoke to her the way they speak to the deaf, in gestures and with the shapes of shadow and light splintering the air.She knew each one she passed by its secret name, the path sap took from root to leaf, the way fog rested like a scarf around its shoulders, the way each day was a slow step in its long dance, the way they forgave her with new greens after each long winter’s freeze.
She had no guardian angel but a great bird, a shadow falling like an owl, silent and dark, swift and accurate as any raptor, claw and beak and the hush of air coming down clean as a knife.
Even with that fierce eye, she was more crow than owl or eagle, no diva but a canny scavenger, polishing her darks in the sun, voice a raw caw, neither the gull’s bold squack nor the long soft grief of the dove, her voice unfit for words in any language but the one she invented to speak to herself.
Arms spread like wings she wore her fury like a crown, a totem, a warning, a bird whose silent scream could turn men's bones to sand, leaving her there at last a Queen, triumphant and alone.
Millie
It was easy for us
to be wild together
that August at the first
ever street art fair
meant as counterpoint
to the big one downtown
with no local artists
with its industrial strength
prices, both for art
and the space to show it.
We were the ragamuffin crew
building our own display
outside the liquor store
and the psychedelic groove
of the local bars–that year
we sold nothing but had
many admirers in the crowd
cash poor students
and Hare Krishna devotees
hands full of flowers and
incense ready to see
angels and demons alive
and shining in our paintings
they could appreciate
but not afford–and it was all
OK, Liquor so close to hand
and the generous smoke
layered like stratus in
the air all around us-OK
even when the storm swept
all our stuff down before it
and we had to rescue and
re-fit–back in only hours
to sit there and sell nothing
while the bands played
acid rock and everyone wore
rags and spangles like
Gypsy Queens–You never
bailed even when I was
far too enthusiastic with
the vodka–blind drunk
and something to manage
before our ride came-
to ferry us and all our work
back home. You thought
I left you sober enough to blame–
but no blame was cast
no punishment offered
more than what the body pays
for such wild indulgence..
Years later you gifted me again
when I had abandoned
everything, even speech,
and was blind in the darkest
room-the one you might
never leave alive, and there
was no laughing matter
nothing light enough
to free the smothered breath
from its sour confinement.
Kept close as I was, under
lock and key, being preserved
I thought, like some desiccated
fruit or flower, already dead–
But it was Easter, time
of miracles and resurrections,
and you came to me, my
sister-friend, not with prayers
and sympathy, no cheerful flowers
or candy eggs, but a perfect
Chocolate gun, the bold
hilarity there to rescue me
push me into laughter, even
in that last sad theater of dust.