Poetry by Sophie Farthing

Cobbler

In scorched July

beneath trumpet vines

on the bank above the barn road,

we pick blackberries.

We wade knee-deep in poison ivy,

bobbing and weaving between spiderwebs,

sweating through long-sleeved shirts.

My cat stalks smugly through thickets

we can't reach.

The wind drops. The chickens

open parched beaks to pant, horses

stamp at flies, and Queen Anne's Lace

hangs heavy, crowned heads.

We clutch pails still seedy

from April's strawberry-picking.

Our fingers are purple, prickered.

Like elephants, we lift first one leg,

then the other, considering each step.

We call out in whispers, afraid

to wake the wasps.

I can taste the sun as it ripens

the Better Boys and Early Girls up the hill.

I blink away sweat,

and suddenly, a fat hornet

hovers over my hand

raising the fine hairs on my wrist

with the softest kiss of wings.

My heart beats in my neck.

I stand perfectly still.

I do not breathe.

I do not think.

My tongue swells, my mouth

dries out. Empty of sound,

my ears prickle and chill,

and I hate the sweet-sharp tang

of every berry I have ever picked.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry

for the things I did. Please

forgive me, and help me to do better,

and please help me to love and serve

you, in Jesus' Name—

The hornet passes over my arms,

clips my shoulder,

hums away.

The earth settles on its haunches.

The crickets take up their old song.

This hornet did not mistake paralysis

for disrespect. This hornet thirsts

for blackberries,

not for fear, but I am too young

to know the difference

when it wears my father's eyes.

I shudder. Ants crawl across my feet.

In the garden on the hill,

a bumblebee careens unkempt

into the heart of a zinnia.

Queenie

I never kissed your full lips. My hands

never wandered. I was sixteen, seventeen,

dazed and confused, watching your breasts swing

as you danced along the stone wall, telling myself

you were ugly. Too much body,

too much woman. Daddy liked thin girls.

I wanted to shrink myself so small

no one could see me standing sideways.

We dreamed chiffon dreams.

In the meadow, home-sewn skirts

tugged over our knees,

we watched the sun fillet the sky

in orange and blue. I held your rough hand,

scholar's shoulders hunched in thrift store cap sleeves,

I gazed into your eyes. We lived like

rabbits in lettuces, lapping each other up with thirsty,

thick tongues. I never kissed your full lips. You gave me

the dolphin beads and the shells,

the lace I never wore. Say it.

Say it! The nest we built us was

too small to settle in. Still I remember my thumb

on the fine skin below your forefinger,

how you cried on my bed against the wall,

how my mother watched me with a strange,

embarrassed face, and how

you pulled your hand away. I'm sorry.

I remember the cricks in our necks.

The one hundred strokes you used to

brush your hair. Stumbling awake before dawn,

bras and toothbrushes and tampons,

molasses in my teeth.

When I surprised you on the landing

at our first meeting, you lifted me and spun me in your arms,

and it had been building in me for a long time,

years and years, but you swung me out of orbit.

My arrows have not flown straight since.

And it never was,

and we never did,

and we never will.