Planted by the Signs. Misty Skaggs

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       Oatmeal Cookie Communion

      The layered skirttail

      brushing my plump, pink,

      baby cheek

      is plaid.

      Skinny strips of harvest orange

      and goldenrod yellow

      pen in blocks of pea green.

      The geometric fields and fences

      are flip-flopped.

      Planted beneath a swirl of paisley sea.

      A housedress,

      with every imaginable

      blue hue

      worn thin with age,

      soft and semi-see-through.

      The loose skin of the leg

      shielded by the layers of cloth

      is the same.

      Translucent and shimmering

      like a clean, cotton sheet

      in the spring sunlight

      on the clothesline strung

      between maple trees out back.

      There’s a thick, curvy, muscled calf

      built up by farming

      family bottomland,

      tenderized by age and hard work,

      and finally gone to seed.

      Somewhere above the skirt

      and the housecoat

      and the apron

      and the swirl of color and texture—

      somewhere far above the vines

      of defined veins easy to trace

      with a four-year-old fingertip—

      there was a woman.

      A tender woman

      and a tender, twangy voice

      drifting down to me.

      Somewhere up there

      there were watery blue eyes

      and thick plastic glasses

      with even thicker lenses.

      And a loose white bun

      hovered above those

      with strands as thin and delicate

      as spider silk, escaping

      to brush across her wrinkled face.

      I stand to receive the homemade

      oatmeal cookie communion

      she СКАЧАТЬ