WusGood?

A POC Magazine

Rachel Wiley

WusGood: “What’s your fav thing bout being Slytherin?

Rachel: “My Slytherin Girl Gang”

The Mother Riddle

 

Like finding a rogue shard from a long ago broken glass with the tender bottom of your foot

you realize that you haven’t talked to your mother in what must be months now

and you can only manage to feel sort of bad about not noticing sooner,

But still

you still reach out

you make the attempt

and 3 weeks go by with no response

there is a standoff of silence now,

her, armed to the teeth with self righteousness

and guilt trips

and you with only self preservation and her voice in your head

a moat of passive aggression widening between you that one of you must cross,

that you will cross.

Before you dive in you fill your lungs with the ways this is your fault

Did you not hide your dislike of the ill-fitting Christmas gifts well enough?

Was Christmas the last time you spoke?

Or is this your fault the way everything is/has always been/ will always be

your fault

Is your mother more upset that you aren’t talking

or that you aren’t hearing her talk?

Should you call this time

rather than text?

 

And then, before you can reach for the phone

A sphinx pads gracefully in

and stands guard at your throat

a massive regalfeline with the face of June Cleaver

and a hint of your therapist’s kind eyes

She says you must answer her riddles before you can reach out to the woman who birthed you.

  1. If a daughter stops looking for her mother’s approval does it matter if it was never there?
  2. If a mother disowns her own mother and a daughter then disowns her is this a grudge or a genetic trait?
  3. If a mother hears her daughter being beaten by an angry son in another room of the house, perhaps even the room right next to her own, and pretends she does not-is she still a mother?

3a. If this angry son moves 6 states away and never speaks to the mother again

is that some sick and righteous karma or an inheritance?

3b. If the beaten daughter waits 15 years to ask for an apology

and still does not receive one

and instead receives fault

and only then begins to pull away

is she holding a grudge?

or is the grudge holding her

like her mother should have?

 

  1. If a daughter forgives her mother again  

will it hurt more or less when the mother is careless with her again?

10 & 2/3rd’

Unknown Driftwood with a Mermaid Hair Core

Driftwood enters the ocean as one thing,

a tree or part of a tree swept into the water during a storm,

part of a beachfront house dismantled by natural disaster,

a slave ship tide-wrecked against the jagged rocks by an angry ocean,

and comes out another,

its sins not washed from it but ground in and belonging wholly to it now.

What could hold my magic better than a thing rough born

and smoothed by the ocean’s salt thick mother tongue

baptized in coarseness

Am I not just an ocean too?

water phoenix

full of heavy magic

ship swallower on my worst days

gentle rocking sun catcher on my best

temper like an undertow

Do you hear the waves in me?

Do you see how I push and pull with the moon?

Aren’t I feared for the size of me? Aren’t my depths unreachable?

Do I not also have some mystical siren song thrumming within?

Pulling you close?

Something like love

Something that might just hold you under

Until you cannot breathe

Safety Spells for Sea Monsters

Steal away to our altar  

our clubhouse, the ocean.

Drape the waves above our heads,

a blanket fort against land dwellers who name us monsters

water might be the only thing could ever hold us gentle,

my arms and yours are also water.

 

Banish the ones who scavenge for blood in this water

who search the sand for our teeth to lay at a hateful altar

who decry the water’s crash and churn but never praises its gentle

the ones who come only to poach treasure despite fearing the ocean

that made it. Who exploit the sea and tell all who will hear that it is full of monsters

and then set a reward for our heads.

 

Scatter the meddling fish nibbling our weary heads

we are as necessary to life as this water

we have heart caves sized for monsters

slow the riptides running thru them to quiet hymns , heart caves be the most sacred altar

we are not too much but rather so much, like our ocean

here we may float deservedly gentle

 

The bedside manner of the sea is gentle

we come to heal our busted knuckles and our rattled heads

in this infirmary named ocean

there’s nothing that can’t be fixed in water

in this ward named altar,

Here we can lay down all our power despite being monsters

 

There is loneliness in being monsters

the assumption that we are not gentle

our bond that we know better be an altar

keep water above our heads

not heads above water

Whisper my name and I will meet you in our ocean

 

Howl the blood scavenger’s names and I will weaponize our ocean

remind them they created us monsters

take from them any comfort, any prize they found in the water,

scrape from them anything they ever knew to be gentle

a parching curse laid upon their heads

until they build our humanity it’s proper altar

 

Steal away to our altar

where the light and water dances a crown around our holy heads

here, even the rigid wood of shipwrecks eventually goes gentle.

Rachel Wiley is a queer, biracial poet and performer from Columbus, Ohio where she somehow holds down a rather boring day job.  She is a feminist and a fat positive activist. Rachel is a fellow and faculty member of the Pink Door Writing Retreat held each year in Rochester, New York for women and nonbinary writers of color. She has toured nationally performing at slam venues, colleges, and festivals. Her work has appeared on Upworthy, The Huffington Post, The Militant Baker, Everyday Feminism and PBS News Hour. Her first poetry collection, Fat Girl Finishing School, was published in 2014 by Timber Mouse Publishing. Her second collection, Nothing is Okay, was published in March 2018 by Button Poetryand spent some time as Amazon’s #1 Gay & Lesbian Poetry Collection.