3 Poems by Mercedes Payton

you could have had an abortion

 

daughter   is     another word    for   mirror.     i am a rope of dense cells undulating

through my mother’s bone house,   repeat   repeat   repeating;

a    speculum ratcheting     open;   a womb notched with abjection;   generations of legs

parted  by    jagged hands;     cervixes dilated            as my own pupil.

oh mother.       oh prized madea.       we are both

lower swine;    beasts of feminine viscera.    you,     the gilded matriarch        with  breath made

of superstition                     and me,   fired like a stoneware pot              in your image.

 

 

Shrike Psalm

 

I have grown wings for the sake

of indulging myself. A beak, for picking

through sour garbage in search of icons

 

with your face. I built my nest on

the tongue of God because he looked like

you, or vice versa.  Remember when you

 

took a sterile needle to the back

of my neck and spelled out albatross.

My night shrieking is a special worship;

 

my ripened breath hums your name

like a death rite, like a sex rite. I’ve spent

years writing about the birds, but I keep

 

the bees cloistered in my mouth. I want

to tell you how dolorous I have become;

how crooked from weaving you crowns

 

of barbed wire. Every Sunday, I mount your

phantom on thorns with hands I bloodied

myself and call you religious history.

 

 

natura non contristatur 

 

i am an unwoman.

in the woods, shadow children chronicle my

body; a tome written in uterine fluid.

at dusk, they put a fox placenta between

my teeth so i will know the taste of

wild mothering. i try to tell them about

the crystal ball in my womb, round

as an infant skull. that i have only

ever birthed dry dirt and summer storms wailing

abolition. that sometimes, i pretend to labor

and end up with arms full of almost-daughter

and how i kiss the ghost pads of her velvety feet

before i take her to the rushing riverbed

and put her to sleep.

 

 

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Mercedes Payton is an undergraduate at Kansas State University studying Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Disquiet Arts is her debut publication.