isis the mother by Ella Irvine
and who was she? because I saw her, her right ear tied with light pink twine to the starving, salivating earth and her fingernails stained the color of the UNDERWORLD, isis picking up the pieces of her husband
like a rose or a bouquet of leaves or a sacrifice dripping in stillness, silhouetted in smoke, wearing a shawl of salt across her shoulder blades. is the baby even alive? I watch her as she watches me, eyes opening then closing, drowning in this silence that floods the spaces between all the words we dare not say.
clutching a baby like it is a secret that she carved into herself– scarlet skin a whisper sharper than a scythe and solitude deeper than eternity blooming
fh 13
a
screaming with bare feet in the blood that tastes like wine and devotion or a collapsed body convulsing in the desert or a field soaked in melted bullets and mercury and a woman telling me she gave birth to a child last night, alone
rt
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R ed son i d Ma