These three poems by Mel Connelly wryly address subjectivity, political awareness, and the importance of those who make the world run: your local deli guy, tomboys, and you — yourself…
by: Mel Connelly
Crucifixion
Ceremonies, that quick chop,
like an infomercial
for cutting veggies
for slaw, for slop.
Celebrated, vite,
a triumph for getting
through the meat.
Cartilage and gristle,
reviewed and familiar
to the butcher.
"Why did it take
so long for Europe
to perceive the pig
as the rest of us did?"
Treated like a beast,
inhuman, the criminal's
guts an augur's sacrifice,
oracular and foreign;
snipped off
from the world,
telling, severed
from the world.
"Did we know the liver as a friend?"
That is, *close friend,
because we view it so much as
when we order from the delicatessen
and the cash comes up short so
the man in white says, "It's okay.
I'll see you again.
Fort-Da
I'll feel bad for her, she who presses against ice,
lives under it, looking up always, prodding
at a soft spot for release.
She left the “I” above water yet I fished for it,
her rejection of self-purpose, of person.
My reel broke when her arm finally breached
the surface as I cast toward the opening--
perfect--but she caught the lure, pulling.
I should have let the reel go, thrown it,
heard the toy's echo across the pond
beat its way into the forest.
A call to action! A gun!
A baby babbling for its mom!
My grip wasn't enough.
My standing on the brink
was grounded in pebbles,
pieces slippery, and I fell,
acquiring nothing, losing
the potential to learn
of a first breath of oxygen.
She chose to sink with it,
the reel, the line, the hook,
not knowing if it would survive
where even I couldn't
Thank You
Thank you for the recommendations. Thank you for the octopus pants.
No, those were crabs. Thank you for the crabs or whatever
the hell that scare that never was that one summer and thanks
for doing my dishes. The revolution starts in the kitchen
sink. Thank you for paying attention to me. I thank
my foremothers and my sisters and no one else.
But thank you for paying my rent. Thank the busboy
and the tomboys, thank you for doing your part. And thank
the heavens for my pretty mouth. Thank the moral
of the story for sparing its time. Thank you for not
smoking in the cabin or on the boss’ dime. God bless.
Give praise to unrest. Thank the morning glories once
they open. Thank you for coming.
You shut the door on your way out.
Mel Connelly is a Paris-based lesbian/feminist poet and archivist from rural Georgia. She holds master’s degrees in art history and rare books from Georgia State University and Université Marie & Louis Pasteur. She received her MFA in poetry writing from Columbia University, where she studied literary translation and feminist pedagogy. Find her poems in Sinister Wisdom, Screen Door Review, The Crawfish, Deep South, and more.
