Markie Babbott
Summer 2009
Namesake Rising
Now I watch my daughter consumed with her art—
a sheet of tracing paper stretched over your granite headstone,
a thick stick of charcoal.
Her fingers black dusted, she kneels on lichen,
rubs harder and harder until the carved letters,
numbers, roses emerge,
her namesake rising as if out of the sea;
she rubs vigorously,
as I did that morning when your skin was blue
wake up, wake up.
Winter Melt Issue 2009
SEX WITH A YOUNG WIDOWER
is like CPR on a rubber dummy.
Four quick rescue breaths,
check the airway,
straddle and pump,
resume chest compressions.
His anatomically correct skin peppered with chest hair,
stained with fingerprints;
his dilated eyes pop out like marbles,
until—
he shudders a breath,
perspires,
looks through me,
sleeps hard.
My coat hangs in his bedroom closet
next to her blouses in dry cleaning bags,
high heels in a pile like discarded antlers,
her scent mingling with mine.
At dawn, the closet speaks.
The door ajar,
his young daughter is making
a nest for her Barbies and trolls
she sings to them
lays them down
pulls blankets over their heads
all behind a barbed wire fence of shoes.
BLOODBATH AT BBQ
1 killed, 4 wounded in B’klyn after bullets spray revelers at cookout.
-NY Daily News, 7/7/08
My 12 year old son wants to by a gun--
an AK47 like Akon
Mom, everyone has one.
I let him use ‘crap’ not ‘shit’;
I can use ‘fuck’ not ‘motherfuck’
Break open the mother fucker.
break through the screens,
tie down the mother in one room and daughter in the other,
crystal-meth the fuck out of them then set the beds on fire.
Place fake alarm decals around the house like pissing on each corner.
Whatever
Mothers bathed their daughters and sons
scrubbed their backs with bubbles
and told them fairy tales…
He went with his friends into Prospect Woods at dusk
looking to build a team for ball.
He crossed the big street, he crossed the line.
The rich white boy followed the trail into the Woods.
He came to a clearing in the Woods,
music pulsing everywhere and delicious smoke,
giants and jugglers and fireworks, bottles clinked.
The boy was bathed in strands of dusky light,
he was sprayed by bullets at the barbecue,
fell on top of a 19 year old girl
who fell on top of a 6 year old boy
who fell on a toddler
and it went on like this forever.
I want to buy a motherfucking gun.
Markie Babbott’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Calyx, Literary Mama (on line), Perigee: Publication for the Arts (on line), The Women’s Times: Pioneer Valley and in the anthology, Women.Period (Spinsters Ink, 2008). Her chapbook, Sus Scrofa, won the 2008 Poets Corner Press Chapbook contest, judged by Joshua McKinney. With Julie Akeret, she produced a “bra-cumentary” entitled My First Bra available through Filmmakers Library. A psychologist, she lives with her partner and two children in western Massachusetts.
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