Erica Wright is the author of eight books, including the poetry collection All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned (Black Lawrence Press, 2017) and the essay collection Snake (Bloomsbury, 2020). She is a former editorial board member of Alice James Books and currently teaches at Bellevue University. She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her family. Find her on Instagram and at her website.
SENTIENT
Spring arrives like a pit viper
striking at balloons, his venom
dripping into a cup to save a life.
His toxin must mix with horse blood.
It takes both snake and mare
to make the perfect potion.
When my cousin got bit, it
took forty-eight vials, and still
he goes after the occasional rattler
barefoot, brandishing a shovel.
I suppose I’m trying to say something
about sacrifice. I suppose we suffer
so that we might walk through a field
someday, worried about the weather
and the animals and the future
here on Earth, but admiring
the lot of it, too.
The way the sun strikes
across the horizon like a viper
that saves more lives than he takes.
APRIL, AGAIN
God checks His messages, metes out time
for a few, shrugging off the all-powerful label
that leads to name-calling and expletives
that would make Him blush if light could blush.
He wants to put out a memo re:
Respecting Boundaries in the Workplace,
but that wouldn’t stop the outlaws
from swearing they’re on death’s door.
You’ll know death’s door alright.
It’s got a peephole over the gilded mirror,
so He can see you seeing yourself.
This is as close as God’s got to a fetish.
The look you get when you see your soul
for the first time and think it’s as pretty as winter
in a city known for traffic and shuttered cafes.
Couldn’t it have been a leaf unfurling
like a flag at a football game,
all roaring crowds and fruitless cheer?
Don’t get me started on fruit, God says,
deciding light can blush after all,
deciding everybody He’s ever loved
knows how to use a telephone,
and what’s prayer but a hotline?
What’s hope but a friend saying hello
into the darkness. No need to call
back. I was thinking of you is all.
A LUNG SONG
My voice raises an octave
to something from my girlhood
as breathing loses its territory.
I’ve always liked my lungs.
Their independent streak
when they tried to rattle out
of my skin after the towers fell,
and I walked them through
the toxic air. They still sputter
on occasion like radiators
banging on in fall, reminding me
not to take them for granted
or I might wake to a Dear John note,
ventricles with their thumbs out on 75.
My knees fell in love the year
I turned eight, sticking together
in the tub as they courted.
Wed too young, some said,
but somebody will find
fault no matter what parts marry,
so best to carry on like a barker
hawking his carnival game. I envy
his boom that carries into the crowd.
I envy his pretty wooden horses
that dart forward in their vests,
every bell a new chance, every night
a time to dream of victory
against the long odds of paired lives.
YEAR OF THE FOX
We think a lot about death now.
Whether the nursery’s too cold, how
blankets tangle into traps, fabric
as unyielding as jaws. When we walk,
air conditioners teeter above our heads,
held by window frames older
than my grandfather’s grandfather.
All the men in my family have cancer
or had cancer. I’ve seen the stitches
and prayed in emergency rooms
where my rehearsed amens reached
the fluorescents and beyond.
Once, I brought my dog to a nursing home.
For once, she behaved, let the patients
touch her silken ears with hands too
weak to hurt. Bred to hunt, she never
learned the trick of the chase,
and so was abandoned.
I guess, if you can’t hurt, you’re hurt,
but what do I teach my son instead?
My friend researching foxes tells me
about warrior foxes and fire-stealing foxes.
As if summoned, one appears
at the property line, its frame a wind-up toy
against the sky, its cry a song against the dark.
Listen, child. You can learn to love
the sound for what it is: this world
never belongs to any of us for long.
CABBAGE SEASON
Let’s kill the weeds again,
all that barberry and ash,
brush cherry and coltsfoot.
They don’t creep so much
as bound into life, and don’t you
like their vigor? Don’t you want
to flaunt your unwanted stalks,
slip through dirt until you’re seen?
We shout from our painted rooms
and hope somebody comes
over to see our work. October,
and the cold steals inside
as we’re exposed, and we
count what’s been ripped up
to let other things grow.