Margaret Bashaar

The Giraffe Woman

April wears a garland of dandelions

on Sunday mornings and sits

with her legs open, strips

oranges with her teeth while she waits

for sweet potatoes and ovulation.

She thinks they can break her fever,

that they will show her the spot in her chest

where tumors cluster like heads of cauliflower.

She used to walk in river valleys

under the shade of oak trees and burial

mounds shaped like snakes.

When the earth dipped she would remember

blue-haired girls who slid

across her knuckles like silk,

how she coiled them around her neck,

a Padaung woman, and now she dreams

each night that she kneels

with her forehead pressed to theirs,

eyes distorted.

When she wakes, the comforter

is on the floor, the sheets are wrapped

around her legs and she says,

All the pretty girls date boys now,

but I'd be a hypocrite if I complained.

A bucket in each hand, her lips

are split like wood. She waits

for her roof to leak.

She counts brush strokes on the ceiling.

Margaret Bashaar has lived in Pittsburgh, PA all her life.  She co-edits the

literary journal Weave Magazine and has been previously published in

Caketrain, Brink Magazine, BOXCAR Poetry Review, and Taiga among

others.