St. Dymphna’s Feast Day
I have not tried to die in six years—
my newly purple hair was a halo.
The nurse told me to stop
staining all the bath towels. Say something,
said my roommate. I replied, No.
A man was crucified on TV,
and no one switched the channel.
All the citrus turned bitter,
Seroquel stuck in my throat. I still get antsy
if a room is too fluorescent.
Every May, I draw the curtain of tallies once again.
Thin & vivid as birch bark. I understand now:
In lipstick, I look like my mother.
In euphoria, I look like my uncle.
But today I slice the onions with precision:
patience and cast iron
bursting in front of me.
Balsamic on my wrists.
Guillotine in the church.
Saltines in the mortar.
Silver around our throats:
Pray for us, my uncle’s pendant said.
Pray for us, my mother’s pendant says.
Pray for us, my pendant will say.
I have no idea how long the lilies
have been a lost cause, but I can’t
throw them away now. Petals like dragonfly bodies.
My mother told me we can’t dream about strangers, & yet
I dream of Ohio. I keep misspelling sanctuary.
My adult teeth loose in my head.
Too many bones in my hands.
I still chew on my lips when I pray.
I’m just trying to remember to swallow my pills every night.
I need to replenish the saltshaker,
devein the shrimp,
save the shallot skins.
Listen: I can’t commit to anything but the meal in front of me.
Dream logic
My mother screams after a would-be kidnapper.
The goldfish bowls drain, hourglass-style.
My grandfather lends me his sunhat in the cancer ward—
to protect you, he says.
I forget my reusable grocery bags, carry
the cans and meat
in my arms.
Violet petals rising
from my crater-teeth.
In Seattle, my doppelgänger trashes a hotel room.
I receive the bill in the bill of a seagull.
My cardinal tattoo finds a different sky.
A storm of seeds after the Strawberry Moon.
My lover, suddenly an opera singer.
My grandmother, a fishmonger. I help her scale salmon
and our bloods coat the ice.
A coyote drags the heat wave in by its scorched ankles.
My teeth snap in and out of place
like puzzle pieces
Again, the sunhat.
Prosciutto and bok choy tied together, slow dancing between ribbon.
My mother shaves her head,
takes a vow of silence.
On the news: Donner Party Resurrected. Skeletons floating to the surface,
ham bones fighting the broth.
St. Erasmus’s Feast Day
The new meds have replaced nerves with nausea—different names for the same place.
In front of the dying cornfield, a lemon drop dissolves on my tongue.
In the back of a rental car, a splotch of heat on my forehead.
Paul Simon through the speaker, singing about a dog after the war.
At my grandmother’s memorial, a granola bar in the bathroom stall,
a mask cradling my chin, a eulogy in my lap. At the reception, small bites
of salmon and dill, every relative asking for my list of grad school applications.
I am a beautiful young woman. I look just like my uncle. I am making my family proud.
I will not throw up, even if my body alludes to the idea.
More vivid: my fingernails against the anklet of bug bites, a distraction
from the curling bile. Blood under keratin like a petticoat. Hunger still scrapes at me.
I remember: my grandmother finished grad school with morning sickness.
She only knew how to cook for an entire banquet hall. She used a bottle of hot sauce every
month. She lost her sense of taste after going to the dentist.
She took potatoes out of the oven with her bare hands.
Lyd Havens graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from Boise State University in 2021. Their poetry has been published in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. She is the author of the chapbooks I Gave Birth to All the Ghosts Here (Nostrovia! Press, 2018) and Chokecherry (Game Over Books, 2021), and the winner of the 2022 So to Speak Poetry Prize. Lyd lives in Boise, where they’re currently working on a full-length poetry collection and a novel.