Refrain
By Liv Lansdale
I named my last daughter Echo because in the doctor’s room my hands were placed over my stomach and in the sonogram her hands were placed over her stomach. When she was old enough to speak, I told her I loved her and in response she told me she loved me. How I wondered what to say as a follow-up! But I soon found I didn’t need to. I’d say I love you when I meant Story time’s over or Pass the ketchup or No you can’t tattoo a komodo dragon on your bicep. I love you I love you I love you resounded through the house nearly hourly, like a grandfather clock. This went on for years. I’d once told my husband over breakfast, I wanted to live with someone more like myself. He didn’t hear me, just like he didn’t hear me this morning, when I told him I felt I was finally getting motherhood down. He just turned to the sports section, as if it could offer something new. No wonder I wanted to live with someone more like myself. Cleveland had lost again, I could tell from Echo’s expression. I decided to tend to the garden, like someone who truly was finally getting motherhood down. I put on my overalls. I put on my farmers hat. I put on my sunblock and my work boots and my yellow gloves. I grabbed my bottle of pesticide but, standing before the roses, found I couldn’t pull the trigger. From where I stood, the bugs on the roses looked like a little city. I wondered if they had senators, neighborhoods, family units. I remembered aphids are born pregnant, unless that’s just something I picked up somewhere.
Polaroid
By Liv Lansdale
Shake or shuffle but don’t snip my
photos out from the album under
the stairs for I cannot find us there
or even me slash my looks
slash my lines my washed-out
likeness. What do you call those
chemicals that freeze us dry
when I wave them around like
some stiff flag of surrender? I still
associate memory with rolls of tape
as though wholeness were a purely
physical concern.