Christine MacKenzie

SAY YES

—   “I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.” (Luke 16:3)  

you said that sunflower petals can be pressed into paper / as if i have once cast bodies into glass
molds / stretched down these rivers / to see whether a thing to be written / could be written / &
then you coiled that rust-colored braid / made soft / round your neck as we breathed in the crunch
of pine needles beneath our bare feet / am i prettier now? / your mouth opening / black chamber
encircled golden teeth that will / far far away / grind into gravel / am i prettier now? / you take a
fistful of hardened bread / swallowing it / with a hunger for an answer / say yes to me / tell me
that someone will lay me down next to a pebbled stream / carry my body to the water / wash the
dirt off with their own hands / & dry my feet with a wrinkled little cloth / say yes to me / it is hell
when steel fleshes into the softest yellows with a hand / its touch / that pins you down to grayish
pebbles & the wetness of an braid undone / spread across your back like plant fibrils / say yes to
me / it is hell to admit when you’d rather breathe in the river / your eyes so much bluer in the
image of your head floating there / like the milken reflection of moon engulfed by black / say yes 
/ i wrote these poems for you / you with a thing in your chest that desiccates like a dead bird / it
is still dead / no matter the number of blue feathers sewn into its meaty pale arms / for you / with
the stench of bitter almonds / & grass in your hair / brushed so thinly over your clavicles 

Christine MacKenzie has a B.A. in English, creative writing and psychology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and will start an MSW in Interpersonal Practice in fall 2020 to become a therapist. Previously, she has been published in literary journals such as Susquehanna, The Inflectionist Review, Red Cedar Review, Fourteen Hills, The Merrimack Review, and elsewhere.