Thursday, July 25, 2024: Susan Evans's "Memory of Red"

 walking home from school

on graveled Hopson Street,

past little white clapboards,

a memory of red

blood like a rivulet down my bare leg, and big sister

urged me off the ground,

her tiny frown and blond cocker spaniel

ponytails looking down at me.

and the blood was thick like warm paint,

like salty seawater,

and stopped and spurted on my white socks

for all the world like serious mistakes.

and I wailed over a galvanized wash tub,

as my mother poured a trickle of alcohol,

scorching my pale and trembling leg.

and the hot blood screeched into the tub,

like a red scarf of fear,

awakening my first doubt

that I’d have safe outcomes,

It was an early confirmation

that I’d better get tough

for the rocky road ahead.

and I remember the night

trains in Chester

uprooting, clattering and scooting

my Beautyrest across the room,

like coiled springs running

on bedrails.

and Don, after trying to hush

my moans, sang, “Like a freight train

running through the middle of my head,

woo woo,” in the dim blue afterglow.

but I don’t want to remember anything sad.

like Lonesome Bob and Willie’s stardust

on the blanket, his heart like a chunk of space rock

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and hard as a meteor.

and I don't want to write about that picture

of the orange Van Gogh,

and his madness and night journey

and Granny and her vermillion roses,

putting her little shoes away.

Or how Great-Grandma, tiny as a matchstick,

said “Yes, lots of birds, and they shit all over my porch.”

I, too, clean up the nasty spills

of romantic droppings,

like bird shit.

I am an experienced victim,

and see through disguises,

see beyond my vanishing troubadour,

bard Marc of birds,

running from love

like an unarmed man being shot at,

wetting the tip of his magic pencil,

with a great flourish

offering his girl with the turquoise toenails

100,000 poetic words,

not one the one I wanted to hear.

but I no longer scarf down table scraps

leftover from of all the black knights,

the yesterdicks, that rode hard

in the direction of chilled wind,

that stole major energy and gave minor rewards,

leaving a bitter taste of rotten fruit in my mouth.

Now I make my own bread.

All I want is just one small plate of heaven,

I take heart.

Some nights, as silence like apple blossoms fall

from the sky of my ceiling

and evenings pink sunsets

trickle down like promises.

If I look into myself,

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I see I’m a scarlet firebird,

and my burning body rises,

smoldering, but always new from its pyre.

© 2024 Susan Evans

Susan H. Evans lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and is a writer and former English professor. She enjoys writing poetry, creative nonfiction, and memoir, and is published in many print and online journals and magazines.