Alina Mallett | Poems

roots

earth:

i want to get stoned and fall into the grass where i feel like im sinking so far i hit the bedrock just to question why the surface of the world isn’t enough for me

get deep with me
dig deep inside yourself to see the world in new colors
embrace yourself in the waves as you let the ocean fall from your eyelids and tell me your biggest regrets
confess to me like a im a priest who will forgive your gravest mistakes and i’ll take it to my own.

spell out how your internalized misogyny caused your last relationship to end.
whisper to me how your family is nothing more to you than a snag on ancestry.com

let’s go back to our roots.
ask the trees how they feel about all the love letters that were burned
reconnect with the soil to ask if it’s happy in how our world turned out, only to discover it’s not.
get stuck between a rock and a hard place— the one where you can’t picture how the future will be
the one that makes you crawl beneath the stone and dirt to accept your fate

but before it’s all over let’s kiss the ground with the weeds, the herbs, the gardens.
to worship the fruits of life one last time
only to realize what is worth living for.

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mother deer

mother deer:

mother deer warned me to look out for strangers
especially in the month of november
when the leaves of the forest start to fall to reveal
a small, innocent eyed fawn.

mother deer gave me a few rules to live by:
when you feel threatened, flee.
take a few seconds to look around but never freeze
always look out for a target that aims for my head,
flee flee flee.

mother deer, beware of mimicry.
i made the wolf who pretended to be just like me, my dearest.
he protected me in disguise from the barrels,
shared cuddles atop the blanket of snow, our fur warming each other up.

it was summer when he kissed me.
i learnt of his sharp fangs.
mother deer, what do i do?
i cannot flee.
how could i have been so naive?
hunting season lasts all year.

must i learn the path red riding took
like the back of my hand?
i cannot stray or flee from
the real danger that lies in the forest i call “home.”

oh… what big orange eyes he had,
the better they are to stare at me,
claim me as his prey,
watch as he savors me like i will be his last meal.

i want to strike him with my hooves, cracking his ribs as i push him to get off of me.
i want to bite his terrible claws that hold me down so thin that they bleed.
i want to make antlers to grow out of my head to puncture his skin.
i want to use them as a knife to slice his head clean off so he will never hurt another.
mother deer, i became my own hunter.

he couldn’t flee.
i watched him fall and beg me for the mercy
and ignored his cries like he did mine.
i collected his tears as a prize before cutting out my stolen innocence from his belly, and
replacing it with sharp stones
that shattered his blackened heart.

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déjà vu:

do you remember when the waitress
at ihop in anaheim
said i’m the spitting image of you
i sank into the bottom of my chair—

i hated when people would say that—
spitting is so gross.
camels chew up grass and fallen leaves
and spit out a grotesque anomaly
leaving its mark on the ground

did Mary ever think those gifts were disgusting?
that incense followed her wherever she went
even in that god-forsaken stable
where they monitored you like an infant.

i couldn’t see what she saw
i’d rarely ever see you–
not since you were released.

it’s hump day!
you would be home from work early tonight, right?
you always would pass and see that small chapel

hey, weren’t you born on a wednesday?
i wonder if Jesus was too.

no amount of christian wine could heal you–
it was a miracle that you got sober.
God had to be on your side

you would cry at the back of the church
during sunday mass
no matter how many times you got baptized
you couldn’t wash away the feeling of him on your skin

when it was my turn
God whispered to you that he had gotten déjà vu.

now it was your turn
to wait for me to come home.

you hugged me for the first time
that night.
i cried in your arms til the morning
like i was a little girl again
you felt so warm
i used to pray for this

the waitress said how beautiful we were
and you laughed
and for the first time i realized
being the spitting image of you wasn’t that bad.

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