RUINER
down on the tide line a naked woman stands
I know it’s her because we have the same breasts and hair when
she wades in the water she undoes her claw clip
bending, tossing it like a coin, marbled plastic delicate it
beats at the shore
in the brush she finds a quiet rock and a mussel shell
still folded and blue doubles shining in the tide light
she smashes the shell making a slight edge
triangulated gleaming, a blade organic
she shows teeth before sitting down and opening wide
her legs
she grabs tufts of her pubic hair and shaves them off
with the pearlescent mussel shell
brown heady curls
dusting out and away from her and she lets her eyes
soften I watch as my mom leaves the shell in the sand
draws her mole bitten arms to herself in the water wading
now a string
of dark red wrapping down her thigh and into the foam
ASPHALT SKINNY
you hold my hand
spread your two favorite fingers in a v
You know the back of my hand
best a throat the soft walls
of a canal webbing
your tongue bigger than
my thumb I thank you god your coat smells smokey
and cheap the pilling
stings my shaved arms where you turn me
and my arms cannot even
reach the ends of the coat
you point a whistle from your teeth say my name
and your new dog comes
she looks nothing
like me so why did you name her
that I feel her pebbled
nipples under my hand as I
scratch her belly and you
say we are the same so
easy to teach we open our mouths and accept what is guided
inside
At work I can inhale my lunch
fast enough so that
everyone else thinks
I just don’t eat I love this July
my hands they are in a book
shape for him he glides
and tells me to beg
and I do just how
you taught me to out behind the treehouse that dog I mean
girl body I had its shapes and
pebbles pile driven into the earth
*
Maya Stahler is a poet from Oregon who is currently an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her most recent work appears/is forthcoming in Longleaf Review, Squawk Back, Dialogist, and elsewhere.
New Critique 