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2 poems by Emily Tuttle

Emily Tuttle

 peninsula / credit: em
peninsula / credit: em

My Mother Asks Me to Put Myself in My Father’s Shoes

I wrapped him in the ocean
so the waves
could help him sleep,
roll over him
like seashells,
resting while the world
crashed.
We built him from a lake
and his sister from the lilies—
that one is an oasis now,
koi fish flicking
in her chest.
She asks how babies are made,
and I say the soggy parts,
and she asks if that’s where
our scratches are from,
cracks in our
brown leaf skin?
I shush her with lullabies,
old songs used to help
bread rise,
but stop when
we get too loud,
tracing labyrinth patterns
on my wife’s tired thighs,
once they are asleep,
I wish we could pluck
the feathers off her chest
to build us stronger wings.
Not like Icarus, who flew too high,
but like Orpheus, who wanted too much.

They Only Grow When It Rains

Shove me in
a cardboard box
elbows akimbo
splinters in
soft places
exposed
underarms
jugular
chalk lines
maybe
if I cram
somewhere
outside of you
I can be
crushed
by something more
beautiful.

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About Emily Tuttle

Emily Tuttle is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park, where she was editor of two on-campus journals and editorial assistant to Poet Lore for two years. She has been awarded the Jimenez-Porter Literary Prize for Poetry. Previously, she has been published in Ghost City Review, Yes Poetry, apt, and Sigma Tau Delta's Rectangle, among others.

Author: Emily Tuttle Tags: poetry Category: Poetry October 26, 2018

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Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine which publishes new work each Friday.

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