A Thursday, 1959
When did she decide A sequence of doors A pattern of raps No evidence but shame Whore In the swollen kitchen They laid her Against smooth wood Ginned memory Her child stone Her hips shape why Legs matchsticks Their ends smoke Her hands splinterless Her child Smoke Something unresponsible delicious and dried Past recognition A hind leg hanging
The gurgling hush in the room Her shame a sleeping tongue What registers Woman Woman Woman
Woman Her eyes closed Her mother her fingernails digging The table a palimpsest of women Her hands search Come up bloodless Not even gin soothes the smoothness under hand The table uninterrupted by her Her skin catching nothing Cradling water in the after bath Her loud loss on a shelf
I find myself afraid of my grandmother’s blood
her past needles / stuck spot
hand blue, red on my hand as I lift her / blood mixing
a tipped dixie cup of wine where she fell / skin
fatless, flush to muscle / too thin
to band-aid / what I can offer too thin to clot
Jules Wood is a queer femme burlesque performer and MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her poetry has appeared in Lana Turner, Word Riot, and The Cossack Review, among other journals. Photo credit: Suma Jane Dark