1.
Do you remember the morning she died?
I do, it was evening, the sun setting down.
Not dawn? The sun shone. It was grey, it was
raining—the peepers out for the first time.
My skull rattles still with the screeching of crows,
hurricane black, hundreds of them
Etched in my brain the silent white birds
I was cold and I trembled as they sliced the sky.
Hundreds of curious guests watching us
my rusty sweat, the weight of her pall
three wailing aunts rocking you soft,
soft drizzle their wetness on your spring bulb heart.
Their hugs a warm cloak, their sobs lullaby
Their mouths stuffed with cake, pasta frola.
2.
We come from one egg one woman one man
one sperm double helix copied recopied
ATTTG we both have blue eyes our roots
capillaries echoes of one sequence—spooling in
spirals nitrogen bases repeated repeated tall tall
lanky lanky. Uncoiling my colorless DNA red wrath
unravels poisons me crimson. Today on your body
the scent of her last day you love that Dior fragrance
my nostrils inflamed my stomach all churn we toast
your first born your tongue savors cake, pasta frola.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 6.
Valy Steverlynck is an Argentine-American mother, artist, emerging poet, and oyster farmer based in Maine. Steverlynck’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Poets Reading the News, Literary Mama, Panoplyzine, and Cider Press Review. Her visual work has been shown at multiple galleries and art museums, including the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, DeCordova Museum, Fuller Museum of Art, and Centro Recoleta, Argentina. When not tending to her oysters, Steverlynck likes to take long hikes in the woods, swim in salt water, and read. She is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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