Two Poems

Lauren Nicole Nixon

Moving Closer in the Field

You saw me in the backyard leaning against the oak

humming a ditty about the weight of things. Trying to find a melody

for the space between moist plots of earth and dried slabs of red clay.

Between leaking and gushing

and dripping and flooding.

Say, what, exactly, is the opposite of hardness if you don’t know what softness feels like?

Would that thing that exists on the other side of our yard feel better against my neck, my shoulder blades?

Would it sing me a lullaby or would I go down, down in flames?

A soft wall of lavender.

A bed made of woodbine honeysuckle and moss, woven together with hemp.

Perhaps a row of lambs ear.

If we jump the fence, one of three things’ll happen:

That hound next door might groan his mean, guttural groan. Sink his teeth into one of us.

The ivy could get us and make us itch for days

Or the neighbors could squeal to mama.

We could say that we lost our favorite ball on the other side, but they’ll know that we’re telling them fibs.

___

I ate a grapefruit and left the peel on the windowsill, let the sun kiss it for a few days. I watched it rot and harden, a circus of flies crowding the bitter rind. I watched em buzz for an hour or so, then walked away from the mess. If mother were to see the flies, the larvae, hatching, new lives blooming, she'd have a fit. But mama, I'm telling you, I like the filth of things.

***

you can forget if you really wanna or Stirring

Those clubhouse kids up the block, I've
overheard em talkin about defeating

the Boogeyman, crushing that

Louisiana Rougarou.  And in each account,

they make it out alive/seamless n slick n oozing their way
outta the cracks like warm butter.  See,

I've heard some rustling in the attic, an invisible restlessness/
a stirring.  I wanna go up there to check it out but

my bravery pants haven't been fitting quite right.  I'm tellin you:

there's something up there that's mean-boned and
prickly-skinned and

more wily
than that bully down the street.  Something that can't be reeled in

using a scoop net or a scare tactic or a clove hitch
knot.

This is about navigating the swamp/and the attic/

and your gramma's backyard,
too.

All those places are lookin to be conquered/and lookin
to conquer you 

simultaneously.  A double-duty situation. 
___

Ephemera is sweet n salty/all at once.  Here is an example: you have boxed and tagged some things/you've locked em up in your gramma's attic/they are sleeping safe n sound.  Here is another example: you have boxed and tagged some things/they shoulda rusted or decomposed by now /they are awake and ready. 

Lauren Nicole Nixon is somewhere in Brooklyn with dark chocolate smeared across her chin, wishing she could croon like Louis Armstrong and sting like a wasp all at once.  She believes in the power of midnight snacks and mischief-making.  Though she is a grown woman, she insists on calling her mother at least twice a day.
Lauren.Nicole.Nixon@gmail.com

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