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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 3827 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention To Thaw is to Burn Steve Williams Along the beach she strolled alone, past gulls perched on driftwood, her shoes tied together, draped around her neck. The face of a younger woman shimmered on the edge of Charlotte's smile as she created virgin tracks in sidewinding sand, soon to vanish. The past is rarely temperate. Memory is held in ice or locked in the liquid centers of blue flame: gnawing teeth of combustion. On Knob Hill, above the corn, the river, above the red winged blackbirds, who cackle on cattails along the irrigation ditch, I sit next to the headstone, and my vision burns. Charlotte is here, her home-sewn dresses, earthen hands embracing garden vegetables. Her kitchen is here, still warm, mason jars with scrawled labels of torn masking tape. My grandfather's wife is here, my father's mother, but not the woman's face i saw that day, on the edge of a smile, poised to unravel. |
