Two Poems from the Deadbook
burial no. 1
sister, this land is fine
dust the Creators brushed off
their tables and saws.
my shovel resents this burial.
it tells me this dirt tastes green,
sickly, unnatural.
you are no longer here.
i am glad,
but i need to grieve.
your right arm carried your dances;
it mocked the Space meant to contain
the giving god.
your two eyes, now judgment-blank,
would be easy to eat. i would wash them
down the gullet, wine-slick.
your face, with the forehead
i kissed when we were young
and you adored me: i love you,
but one of us had to die.
i grab the spent shovel,
the bag with the rest of you.
red doves fly full-speed
into your grave to join you.
their necks break in time with my every step.
(SISTER sits at the confetti-specked white bar, and lets the housemade
Dog’s Tongue soak into her skin. She thinks of the woman from her visions
on the Famine Road.)
burial no. 2
sister, sister
(lifts up her thumb)
these grains of sand
out-exist you.
get thee to a fishery, sister
(pulls an ear from the bucket)
get thee to a pit
Ántonia you are the disproof
of god, how i suffered you
strip me of my jackal skin
shame me nude and brittle
(takes a bite from her fist before hurling it to the lake)
i hope you are being eaten by eels
in an arsenic moat
(BROTHER drops the bucket and staggers, out of breath. The whites of
his eyes have shifted to a burnt orange. He wipes rusty drops from the
edges of his eyes. He walks away slowly. A falcon falls into the shallows
and turns to porcelain teeth. SISTER’s favorite flowers begin to grow from
the bucket.)
Ántonia Timothy is from Baltimore, MD. Her first collection, Self-Titled by Alien, has been published by Milk Carton Press. Individual poems have appeared in: Poet Lore, The Fiddlehead, Washington Square Review, and Los Angeles Review, among others. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University.