Hannah Warren

Interim

The garlic clove crunches under a mallet’s
            teeth, or maybe your palm.
Picture this: a red-headed
child walks in the door,
swinging her backpack.
She asks why the triceratops eat only flowers.
You’ve taught her to love the unknown,
            fear the omnipotents,
but she wants the answers anyway.
Forgotten,
            she feels like July
as she pulls away the cornhusks and leans
on your side
of the table. She tells you
            stir fry makes the grass grow,
but weeds live in the oil. Lemon juices race
down your arm, burning
into the mosquito bite on your elbow.
            Outside, rain patters the tulips.

---

Grey Goose and Grim Grins

I saw a mockingbird
crack a joke
            yesterday
morning. She dipped
her wing
into my coffee--
hot wings.
            I heard
my daughter’s voice
singing through
dappled feathers.
And the wren
            whispered
that I, like my daughter,
can weave
nooses with the cusps
of my split-ends,
cut into cords. I
can carry
myself
upward to the draft
floating the wren
where the
            ropes wrap
smoother
than lightning.

---

Whiskey’s Body

Mandibled in folklore,
I’m carried stranger
to a stranger:
            I’m metheglin today--
cinnamon, oak, and well-water.
Check my pulse for a list of ingredients
common to my tongue
—use your lips softly because his teeth
petaled bruises. Before you leave,
     take me
through Avalon’s groves.
     Tuck me
into the amber until my marrow
thickens gentle. His dirt-smudged fingers
will pry me from my own density.
If I wake tomorrow as a bottled body
laced                with absinthe,
I’ll chase the water with bourbon
aged in a shot of something blue.




--
Hannah Warren is an MFA student at the University of Kansas, and her works have appeared recently or will soon appear in The Vignette Review, Soundings East, and The Nottingham Review. Hannah often writes about death but hopes never to experience it.