Shared noodles, over concrete

for Vida

“I hid from it. I mean, I ran to the garage,”
She said. Her beef stroganoff had paled, cooled
As she spoke, stilted-steady, knowing the words
Could exit and be their own creatures, not in cages
But not free-range, either; in houses, properly locked.
I remembered when, before, we’d seen a dead bird

In this same place, speaking of other treacheries, the bird
Carcass, when noticed, halting her sentence like a frightened garage
Door about to hit some invisible leaf. We couldn’t go back, locked
Into this deeper thing of death: a body cooled
Splayed, feet up, on concrete. I wondered aloud if cages
Could have protected it, but those were just words

To say. I ate my own stroganoff, wondering what words
Could be offered for this destruction. If a bird
Demanded our sympathy, what of us in eight-story cages,
Holding a jagged memory of a garage
Escape? What had she wondered? ‘Had he cooled
Off? Would it happen again? What was it in me that wasn’t locked

Tightly enough? Or was I locked
At all?’ And when she spoke it, in brave precocity, the words
Offered back were a warning, a critique, a shame: no cooled
vengeance like an osprey’s sacrifice for her baby bird.
Her presence wasn’t fit for the family home; only the garage.
Somehow, the song of her nest was not “Men like that deserve to be in cages,”

But they were extended to her. Steel-quiet cages
Draped in the dark, evil velvet of honor, locked
From the outside while she found safety in a garage.
“I was weak,” she said. “That’s not how I see it,” I started, words
Clotting in my mouth. We couldn’t go back, not from the bird,
Not from this, but I let my lips part; my teeth cooled

By oxygen inhaled at a new angle. It had to be cooled,
All this breath enclosed and set free from rib cages,
Faint and fragile as the hollow bones of a bird,
Not simply a bone-pile, but formed, locked
Into the skeleton of her history, a truly emerging anatomy of words
Guiding her here from a cramped, macabre garage

She looked backward and forward at the cages, understanding they must be cooled
To be seen; the garage slowly, laboriously pushed open to allow the bird
A new flight. She locked the styrofoam holding her lunch and graced me with more words.

Seaworthy

My every tangled lobe is occupied
by water’s heave, yet ocean’s daughter, too;
I won’t be shackled by the tide.

I thought I had no true right to reside
upon a newborn island’s point of view;
my every tangled lobe preoccupied.

I’ve felt the snarling wind as I decide,
revolving liquid, jetsam to a roux,
replete with shackles by the tide.

Succumbing to the apathetic ride
of what’s been done as what I needs must do;
my every tangled lobe now ossified.

My will gasps air, remembers I’m supplied
my own brave oar to flex the waves anew.
I snap the shackles of the tide.

So though the currents seep dissatisfied,
I row north toward a holy rendezvous.
Though every tangled lobe is occupied;
I won’t be shackled by the tide.

Christy Jones is a Minnesotan poet, singer, actress, and playwright. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Lindenwood University and has works published or forthcoming in The Collidescope, Reckoning Press, Eunoia Review, and Crêpe & Penn, among others. For amusing retweets on linguistic oddities and musical theater errata, follow her on Twitter at @cjosings.