Jessica Purdy
Ripe
Remarkable this mother-body.
Its cervix having ripened twice
and now its uterus removed.
Doorway to nowhere. A cinched
purse with the bottom blown out.
Stitches dissolved and now I’m
running after having sat still
in fear for years. Fear that staved
off self-ripening. An urge to inhabit
a shell. A soft body that found
a home of safety. I lived under
rocks, taking currents as they came.
Claws raised at the approach
of danger. Just when I thought
I was something about to be past.
Past tense. Past that moment
of best taste and texture. This
emergence will last a moment,
I know. The apple will fall
and bruise. The yellow jackets
will swarm around its fermenting
vinegar. The avocado, hard one
minute, will decline into pudding
the next. I will be glad to have
lived in the open for this distance.
This dash—
Its cervix having ripened twice
and now its uterus removed.
Doorway to nowhere. A cinched
purse with the bottom blown out.
Stitches dissolved and now I’m
running after having sat still
in fear for years. Fear that staved
off self-ripening. An urge to inhabit
a shell. A soft body that found
a home of safety. I lived under
rocks, taking currents as they came.
Claws raised at the approach
of danger. Just when I thought
I was something about to be past.
Past tense. Past that moment
of best taste and texture. This
emergence will last a moment,
I know. The apple will fall
and bruise. The yellow jackets
will swarm around its fermenting
vinegar. The avocado, hard one
minute, will decline into pudding
the next. I will be glad to have
lived in the open for this distance.
This dash—
Say Memories are Current Events
Say you’re nearing the woods
and a fly begins to bother you.
Returning again and again
despite your waving it away
and you are walking alone
on the dirt road
no one around to see you dance
to the music in your ears. Say
you’re skipping now
the way you used to as a child.
Who are you exactly anymore?
Say you’re traveling further
and further away from
the delinquent water bill.
The windows that need replacing.
Your children and their serious
troubles. Say you forgot to wear
bug spray. Say you can’t see
in the woods once you reach them
because you’re wearing sunglasses.
Say you feel joy despite all the aches.
The people you miss. Who do you miss?
Who are you yearning for?
Say you learned a childhood friend
has died unexpectedly.
Does that make you wonder
how despair might have been filling
him? His sad eyes look out
from his obituary and you can’t
remember what he looked like
in high school. Only that he was kind
to you then. Say you’re now hearing
a melody that makes your feet stomp
the muddy path like you’re
in Flashdance. The 80s far
in the rearview but so close you can
touch the air between you
and your classmates. The desks
and melamine chairs. The chalkboard
dust and summer air coming
through the tilt-out windows
just before school lets out on the last day.
Say you didn’t know then
that you would ever dream
that you couldn’t find your classroom.
Never attend the class at all and yet
you have to take the test
without knowing a damn thing.
All the hallways are long and lockered
and then you’re outside on the other end
of a campus you don’t have a map for
and the stairs back are in some hidden
part of the school getting smaller
and smaller as you try to find your way.
Say you wake up relieved that this
never really happened to you.
The bathtub soap scum is yours.
The windows still open and shut
even if sometimes you can’t see
through them. The water still runs
in the sink and you use it to wash
your face, your hands. The same
face you’ve always had. Your throat
looks saggier now than when
you were young and wore eyeshadow
that matched your nail polish.
Blue mascara. Feathered your hair.
Under the green of trees, say you fear
you won’t hear the coyotes
triangulating around you, the rabid
fox who might enter from out of nowhere
but you leave it. Just leave it behind
like the rest of the normal people
who live like they own
everything they touch. Say you can
pretend like that for these few
precious minutes until you’re galloping
again, the drumbeat in your ears
lifting your heart so high it is your chest
pulling you along. Say you can feel it
strung like there’s a kite attached up there.
Somewhere you can’t see,
but in your mind it’s old-school:
diamond-shaped, bright yellow,
and neatly tied with a bow.
and a fly begins to bother you.
Returning again and again
despite your waving it away
and you are walking alone
on the dirt road
no one around to see you dance
to the music in your ears. Say
you’re skipping now
the way you used to as a child.
Who are you exactly anymore?
Say you’re traveling further
and further away from
the delinquent water bill.
The windows that need replacing.
Your children and their serious
troubles. Say you forgot to wear
bug spray. Say you can’t see
in the woods once you reach them
because you’re wearing sunglasses.
Say you feel joy despite all the aches.
The people you miss. Who do you miss?
Who are you yearning for?
Say you learned a childhood friend
has died unexpectedly.
Does that make you wonder
how despair might have been filling
him? His sad eyes look out
from his obituary and you can’t
remember what he looked like
in high school. Only that he was kind
to you then. Say you’re now hearing
a melody that makes your feet stomp
the muddy path like you’re
in Flashdance. The 80s far
in the rearview but so close you can
touch the air between you
and your classmates. The desks
and melamine chairs. The chalkboard
dust and summer air coming
through the tilt-out windows
just before school lets out on the last day.
Say you didn’t know then
that you would ever dream
that you couldn’t find your classroom.
Never attend the class at all and yet
you have to take the test
without knowing a damn thing.
All the hallways are long and lockered
and then you’re outside on the other end
of a campus you don’t have a map for
and the stairs back are in some hidden
part of the school getting smaller
and smaller as you try to find your way.
Say you wake up relieved that this
never really happened to you.
The bathtub soap scum is yours.
The windows still open and shut
even if sometimes you can’t see
through them. The water still runs
in the sink and you use it to wash
your face, your hands. The same
face you’ve always had. Your throat
looks saggier now than when
you were young and wore eyeshadow
that matched your nail polish.
Blue mascara. Feathered your hair.
Under the green of trees, say you fear
you won’t hear the coyotes
triangulating around you, the rabid
fox who might enter from out of nowhere
but you leave it. Just leave it behind
like the rest of the normal people
who live like they own
everything they touch. Say you can
pretend like that for these few
precious minutes until you’re galloping
again, the drumbeat in your ears
lifting your heart so high it is your chest
pulling you along. Say you can feel it
strung like there’s a kite attached up there.
Somewhere you can’t see,
but in your mind it’s old-school:
diamond-shaped, bright yellow,
and neatly tied with a bow.
When Asked How I Will Begin
I will begin with my body.
How it lifts me away
from the floor even as it
holds me to the ground.
My feet will make contact first.
Then air fills me. My chest
barely navigates the words
not spoken. The breath heaved
from sleep. I will begin
with water. Washing a face.
Emptying my body of waste.
Filling its cavern. What if
I was fire? Today I would
make the flame rise higher.
Today I would find
what matters by what burns.
Feet begin to flame
as the end of day weighs on.
The furnace is down there.
Underneath the trapdoor.
The fireplace flickers. A painting
of water above the mantel
curves its way into leaving.
Thorns catch clothing as I go.
I have been breathing air all day.
I will begin the end with fire.
Hold it in my palms. The night
will part with my going. Close
behind me like velvet
in a darkened theater.
How it lifts me away
from the floor even as it
holds me to the ground.
My feet will make contact first.
Then air fills me. My chest
barely navigates the words
not spoken. The breath heaved
from sleep. I will begin
with water. Washing a face.
Emptying my body of waste.
Filling its cavern. What if
I was fire? Today I would
make the flame rise higher.
Today I would find
what matters by what burns.
Feet begin to flame
as the end of day weighs on.
The furnace is down there.
Underneath the trapdoor.
The fireplace flickers. A painting
of water above the mantel
curves its way into leaving.
Thorns catch clothing as I go.
I have been breathing air all day.
I will begin the end with fire.
Hold it in my palms. The night
will part with my going. Close
behind me like velvet
in a darkened theater.
When You Start Running at 51
In the year I start running the killdeer raise their young
blocking the track and screaming at me. My legs separate
from my eyes which are drawn to their black neck rings.
Sometimes I run as fast as I can and feel like I might lift
off, explode like a failed rocket and fall down. My shirt
would streak with red rubber. They’d peel the lane numbers
off me at the coroner’s. Because honestly how many more
years will my joints keep pistoning me forward? When
I thought I knew myself I was a period at the end of a
sentence. I was never a question. Until I was. The mark
stamped on my skull like a missed lesson. A schoolbook
weighs me down in my backpack I sling over one shoulder
some days and I just want to examine the cones
of the echinacea plants. Their shimmer nears me to bee-
status: all hum and business. This week in the year
I started running the chicken thighs went rancid
and the bread sprung up white spots two days after
I brought it home. I’ve been thinking at bedtime
about how easy it would be to succumb to poppy
sleep. How much I want that letting go of the dust
on my nightstand, the toenail clippings someone left
in the carpet. I’d be a junky and fall in love
with my bed. I’ve still so much left to read. Why can’t
I remember any of the words? When I walk the track
with my husband he talks about living somewhere
that doesn’t get so cold in the winter. It’s then that
the floor falls away inside the house of my insides.
Though I know what he means, how the broken asphalt
in our driveway can lead to this dawning. This washing
away erasure of what has been. Our lives of cracking
foundations and flooded basements. I’m moving further
toward lunatic. The one the town kids know as the crazy lady.
Don’t look her in the eye, she’s looking for attention.
I’m running across the green fields and screaming
at threats to my children even though they’re as grown
as me. Funny little legs and feet that touch the ground.
My arms pinioned. My throat ringed as double-dark
as an obsidian choker that tightens. That old sensation
just before the sharp spring of tears comes to the eye.
blocking the track and screaming at me. My legs separate
from my eyes which are drawn to their black neck rings.
Sometimes I run as fast as I can and feel like I might lift
off, explode like a failed rocket and fall down. My shirt
would streak with red rubber. They’d peel the lane numbers
off me at the coroner’s. Because honestly how many more
years will my joints keep pistoning me forward? When
I thought I knew myself I was a period at the end of a
sentence. I was never a question. Until I was. The mark
stamped on my skull like a missed lesson. A schoolbook
weighs me down in my backpack I sling over one shoulder
some days and I just want to examine the cones
of the echinacea plants. Their shimmer nears me to bee-
status: all hum and business. This week in the year
I started running the chicken thighs went rancid
and the bread sprung up white spots two days after
I brought it home. I’ve been thinking at bedtime
about how easy it would be to succumb to poppy
sleep. How much I want that letting go of the dust
on my nightstand, the toenail clippings someone left
in the carpet. I’d be a junky and fall in love
with my bed. I’ve still so much left to read. Why can’t
I remember any of the words? When I walk the track
with my husband he talks about living somewhere
that doesn’t get so cold in the winter. It’s then that
the floor falls away inside the house of my insides.
Though I know what he means, how the broken asphalt
in our driveway can lead to this dawning. This washing
away erasure of what has been. Our lives of cracking
foundations and flooded basements. I’m moving further
toward lunatic. The one the town kids know as the crazy lady.
Don’t look her in the eye, she’s looking for attention.
I’m running across the green fields and screaming
at threats to my children even though they’re as grown
as me. Funny little legs and feet that touch the ground.
My arms pinioned. My throat ringed as double-dark
as an obsidian choker that tightens. That old sensation
just before the sharp spring of tears comes to the eye.
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