Cecil Morris, volume 2 number 4
Hole In The Head Review
her inside gives nothing away
at our daughter’s autopsy, the doctor opens her
like a question and the comforting burr of bees
alive among mandarin blossoms in spring sun
rises, swells—a sound sweet and angry, freighted
with her story, chapters unbound—then black wings beat
as crows assault the air, a dark and noisy lift,
a plethora, too many for her narrow chest,
for the shrinking receptacle of our one girl,
who, more or less than glass, now gives all her secrets
to antiseptic air, to purple latex gloves,
to blood tests and magnetic poles, the blur of crows
in crowded tumult rise, a different kind of hide-
and-seek, the truth comes peek-a-boo, through feathers fanned
for flight, confusion of shapes and shades, to us still
the mystery she didn’t share in the twenty years
since she left our home, the golden straw of our girl
to woman spun, enigma machine idling
in the hall of don’t ask, don’t volunteer, don’t look,
this blonde stranger casting aside our hand-me-downs
of chin and eyes and long limbs and inside what else,
beside the crows, a chattering next of songbirds
at dawn or dusk, incomprehensible but bright,
the foreign language of siskin, junco, house finch,
perpetual blush and flutter, a palpitation
of wings so nearly weightless they float above her
and tell us no more than crickets do as day fades—
that night has arrived and day departed, the end
and beginning, everything at once as always,
and we have only questions and no answers,
no finish to our daughter’s ending, no final
revelation as doctor closes our daughter.
Jean Kane, volume 2 number 3
Hole In The Head Review
Making a Stink
I huffed oil paint
like glue. With turpentine