marigolds wither & wilt
just like my mother’s hands
—entropy. the moon disrobes
to die & my mother slams shut
pinches her flesh, both sides, oppresses
the top of her wrist, resists
the whole of mortality and glares
as if to say can’t you just get along?
I want to pluck what she hates
and tell her they do, mom
look at them bow, conglomerate
kneeling because you said so
when children glue marigolds into books
they’re taught to force the living
into things that can’t die, trace paper
thin graves which marigolds
bloat against. the older kids know
this. we don’t have an art class
for burials, for pressing our dead into caskets
say amen. you will never be
a marigold eradicated for growing
old. this isn’t children of the corn
and I never liked my art class. I’ll let
you go because I have to. find
you in the moon, like the Ancients. they
knew the worth of a spirit disengaged
from its skin, the thing inside we pretend
isn’t there. what we really want to mummify
not your hands. you can hate them. chafe
the dermis together until the age spots
go raw. but they get along, I swear
only friends bow for the other
press their knees into dirt, dame-hood
frond temples to Gaia, all of them
—tree roots which know more than us coiled
in prayer, around a marigold.
Olivia Torres is a queer, ex-fundamentalist, biracial fangirl who hails from a small town in western Massachusetts where the potholes in the roads are so large they have now developed sentience. She received her Bachelor's in English from Westfield State University. Her work has appeared in journals such as the Merrimack Review, Secondchance Lit, the Dandelion Review, Horse Egg Literary, and Alyss Literary Journal. In her spare time, she enjoys deconstructing her learned internalized homophobia, being roasted by her tarot cards, avoiding vegetables, and playing eye-tag with the moon.
Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s National Poetry Month project: Sing the Body: A Collection of Poems Praising Our Selves!
With support from Florida International University’s Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) and Florida International University’s Center for Women and Gender Studies, we are publishing poems that celebrate body positivity and our selves.
In addition to publishing the poems as poems of the day, 10 select Sing the Body poems will be displayed on FIU’s main campus near mirrors and places where women encounter themselves. These poems will live in a dedicated portfolio on our website.
Thank you, as always, for reading and supporting SWWIM Every Day! Happy National Poetry Month!
