Three poems by Elizabeth Threadgill

You Plucked Bees from My Hair

like vibrating seeds
each tells a secret
the trees are singing
the rabbits are drumming
the squirrels are screaming
while the mower
runs in circles your breath
over my eyes
slow roll of cymbals on my skin
your fingers like the roots of trees
conversing
with my hair and jaw
the last bee
whispers a secret
about you

Glass

In her dream she is glass. How did you become glass, I ask. I died and was buried in sand. Lightning struck the beach, and I was shocked into another existence. How did you die, I ask. While I was sleeping, my grandmother tied me to a string and rolled me into the ocean just before the shore for the crabs to eat. She reeled in my body each time another crab ripped away a piece of me. She placed each crab into a bucket. She did this until there was nothing left for the crabs to eat. She buried the bucket in sand and waited to collect glass roots.

 

Mirage

sometimes the desert I left shimmers
like a whale skeleton covered in sequins

the girl who applied powder so thick
her face became a desert—
I imagine the puffer fish
furrowing sculptures     scriptures into her face
cactus flowers blooming from the center

cactus is perhaps just a mouth
consuming     becoming     water like the whale
the fleshy mouth kissing awake
the prince in the desert