Kathryn J Lizee

Maria's Obituary

Maria has been in the ground for a year.
Her sister Sheryl swore that before the anniversary,
she would see Dr. Keys‰ at her office
with those cheerful daisies on the wall
that no one noticed
and give them the fleshy parts of her
that hold all that inherited mystery.
I wrote Maria's obituary;
Sheryl asked me to write the words her family could not.
It was a fluffy piece of poetry
designed to comfort the ones left behind,
words on a page,
paper skin.
I wrote about her legacy,
as if those words could be stretched to cover
the memory of a body I'd seen
in a photograph on Sheryl's refrigerator
a smiling, purple skeleton wearing a cap.
I never knew her,
never saw her before her breasts
turned in on themselves,
the nipples black
and spilling their secrets.

Remembering Hector

They'll tell you that Kentucky bluegrass isn't really blue.
But perhaps they've never seen it at that curious moment
when the ground wakes up and yawning drops of
morning stretch across each slick blade.
I get up early every morning when I come back,
finding my way to the back porch
with a cup of my father's strong brew.
Everyone else sleeps in,
clinging to the quiet for just a bit longer
before the birds and the smell of country ham
draw them from their rooms.
Settling into my favourite chair with my woman's bones,
I see with gentler eyes, wide-open.

He came for the stripping season,
when shirtless centurions worked the tobacco 12 hours a day,
cutting leaf from stalk and earth,
leaving the barns bulging with yellow skin hung up to dry.
He was machismo, arrogant and stubborn and
I gave in, every time,
because he was beautiful in the afterglow.

The first time I got a pile of crap in my mailbox,
I thought it was a joke.
But when they wrote 'Mexican Slut'
in the dust on my father's Monte Carlo,
I knew we were not enough for a place
where each race had their own part of town.

We spent our last night by the swinging bridge,
finding that grassy spot just above the crick.
He slept before me, and I laid on his chest,
trying to bury myself in the fascinating curve of his mouth.
The sun rose too soon that morning,
glinting off the bluegrass like a
burning, rural spotlight.
There were words that should have been said,
but by the time we headed back to town,
he was already gone.

This morning, the grass is a lapis-lazuli blue,
warmed by a Sun which touches
but does not burn the sky.

Kathryn J Lizee is a free-lance writer living in North Olmsted, Ohio. Her work first appeared in Prism, a magazine for gifted students, when she was in the fourth grade. Since then, she's been published by "The Listening Eye", "Urban Spaghetti", received honourable mention in the Best of Ohio Writers competition and was a semi-finalist in the Bart Baxter award for Poetry in Performance. Most recently, she won first place in the Community Writers Association International Writing Competition for her poem 'Goblin Men', a piece about eating disorders in young women. She has written articles and short stories and is working on a historical novel as well as a creative non-fiction piece. She has read at numerous venues, most notably the Seattle Art Museum and has led many poetry workshops across the country. In addition to writing, she enjoys singing, swimming and cooking.