Three Poems

Lisa J. Cihlar

Desire Doesn't Work Here

The wolf chewed her heart out. It was in the blackest part of the night when old quilts of much-washed muted scarlets and blues and greens were piled so thick she couldn't move even to cover her mouth when she yawned or screamed. There were sand colored moths at the window screen again and she never knew what exactly they wanted. Maybe they desired the woolen skirts in the closet where their pearly eggs would hatch and minute worms would chew holes right across the black and orange plaid. If she looked long enough at the fabric, held up to the morning light chunking in the window, she could have read the message and known what would happen before it did; that the wolf with shining cold yellow eyes would cross the yard and the threshold and bound up the stairs on silent pads. The sentry dogs didn't even whimper in their heavy pregnant sleep. There was only one way to stop it, and it had to do with the moon and a rabbit, so afraid it could not move from its crouch under the bridal wreath next to the half empty corn crib. If she knew the rest of the spell she might own empathy.

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Swampy Woman in Retirement

Swampy Woman called the reptile rescue to ask for a western painted turtle, a turtle to sit on a log over a tank of water and bask in the sun pouring through the front room picture window. She would go to a tattoo artist and get yellow stripes etched on her face and neck and down her arms. She would buy red Ritz dye to dissolve in water and turn her breasts and belly turtlish. When she laid on her folded futon in a waterlogged silvery gray cover outside the turtle tank, he would stare at her and she at him. They would both dream aquatic dreams, floating through cattails and lily pads. Crayfish would scuttle and dragonflies metallic the air. When she leaves on a January vacation to the Atchafalaya Swamp in Louisiana she will hire the neighbor boy to feed Herman, a name she chose for her future husband. This would fix her newfound loneliness.

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The Muralist

The self-named Gas Station Slut works the cash register, sells bait and fishing tackle, makes donuts every morning in the big fryer, nine at a time, and cleans chicken parts delivered three times a week by Holstead Meat and Poultry. Cold legs and wings, breasts and thighs, dumped into stainless steel sinks of icy water. She cuts off the thick yellow fat and uses her thumbs to push out gobs of bloody red pulp which may be lungs. They are not the heart or gizzard because she knows those parts. They may hold the last breaths of the white chickens filled with farm air; clover and lilac and the warm scent of a cup of milk splashed into a plastic bowl for the feral cats that race in from all corners of the barn where they crouched watching for mice and rats. The Gas Station Slut spends her nights at home painting murals on the walls. She puts a chicken into every one. And rainbows, she is big on rainbows.

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Lisa J. Cihlar's poems have been published in numerous journals including: The Pedestal Magazine, Bluestem, Green Mountains Review, Qarrtsiluni, and Pirene's Fountain. In 2008 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in rural southern Wisconsin.

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