Queen of the Prairie

by Kelle Groom

One night I wore a red dress that was blue inside, like water on my skin rippling. It could be worn either way with a sash like a tongue tied. I wanted to be transported but all I could do was show up at night. I could never stay. The dress gave me indemnity. Money under my bed after the jumping jacks of childhood—

who could save for the future / What future? Julienned, metaphoric paperweights in my pockets to keep from being blown away. A red sprite is a transient luminous event above a thunderstorm. So many periods began and ended: Ectasian followed by Calymmian followed by Stenian, and that’s just in the Proterozoic—

who will even know the name for us? Martian craters are surrounded by star-shaped ejecta blankets which sound cozy but are the result of impact like the books they used to make of whales. The nuclear impact a fiery erasure. Sidewalks rain-slippery. No umbrella, it is so hot you’ll dry or remove an all-white jumpsuit see-through after a drenching storm and wring it under the ladies’ hand dryer. Who was guarding the night? A stranger petitioned me to live with him after knowing me an hour, so a man from work took me home, and I was just grateful for a familiar face —

a small peach flower is queen of the prairie. It’s as if I saw a light once and can’t find it again. Those left survived a deadly disease, and I’m still straightening shelves. Many moved south or north. The governor who wants to do us in has a face that is constantly melting. It’s hard to know which way to go. Once a spinning jenny was the goal. Once I tried to learn to sew. To have a skill. Tan onion skin cut in the shape of my chest could be a dress. Tapping a pedal to propel a needle—

I want to be useful, like a nun who has ecstasies, carved in stone, clothes in folds like drapes in the ocean, a reef of pinnacles and atolls. Instead I lay on my co-worker’s calm bed. His love for and fear of his girlfriend prophylactic. Asleep in my dress. The blue underlay.

Babylonian Almanac

by Kelle Groom

If Florence Henri’s eyes are full of ink, wave your hands, palms up, as if washing a car or warning her off.

If you receive blue flowers like jellyfish and underwater tulips, let the leaves keep you company.

If there’s an open packet of what looks like oregano on the counter, and when it spills you pick it up. The label reads: Triops Eggs - Wash Hands After Opening - Do Not Eat! The children given prehistoric creature eggs for Christmas. The eggs come alive in water. Prehistoric eggs all over the counter. Find a can of disinfectant above the dryer. Spray the counter. Wash your hands six times.

If a catbird with his dead gray neck rests against bedspring rust, beak a pewter needle, body easy in the outer coils. Feathers fanned a lighter pewter, fold the silk of a dress.

If you find a blond girl in a nightgown, threading a needle, who would now be 110 years old. In Cincinnati. Glint on the bent middle finger. Write entirely in iambic pentameter. Imagine yourself as a bird. Recite to anyone who will listen.

If you find Maybel Williams bringing water to the threshing crew in 1909 Montana. One man flat on his stomach in the hay reaching for the dark cup in Maybel’s hand stretched toward him. Maybel looking at you, you’ve got to make everything new.

If you find a window – another glass placed inside it with your longed-for past, accept the kitchen. Accept the rain. Accept the drinking. Accept what brought you here. Accept your lack of housing. Accept your lack of money. Accept being “between jobs,” “between places.”

If a tall ghost or angel, all cloud, strides across the street in Lowell, Massachusetts, a Market Day in 1850. But no one seems to see him, wings in motion, white head helmeted, though he’s twice or triple the size of nearby men, gather handfuls of sand instead of the body. You can’t find the body.

If a girl looks at you over her dead baby sister whose hair is almost invisibly blond, eyes closed, body less relaxed. One hand on the sister’s white pillow. Eyes flat sadness, three times say something kind, like a charm.

If the mother’s iris and pupil rise high in her eye, almost rolled back inside her head. Surrounded by white. As if her eyes have given up. Then make your mouth a fire.

If the mother’s lips are white too, slightly parted. As when one says oh, oh. Her neck elegant black crisscross ties. Eyes on you, but one hand reaches for the boy in her lap. The boy’s dark hair curls like waves in a woodcut. Shadows under his closed eyes. Reach inside the glass top cracked in an arc to finally touch her.

If you are caught in one idea, follow a policeman giving a new policeman a tour. Photograph a mending needle in a case – it’s made of scrimshaw with two stars each surrounded with a circle.

The glass case fills with light each time your camera clicks. Photograph the bone corset – just one bone – a gift, inscribed with something like embroidery.

If you don’t manifest, then linger. Sing as your backpack and purse go through the x-ray machine. This song is for you.

Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry collections, UnderwaterCity (University Press of Florida, 2004), Luckily, Five Kingdoms, and Spill (Anhinga Press, 2007, 2010, 2018); a memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2011), a B&N Discover selection and The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; and most recently, How to Live: A Memoir in Essays (Tupelo Press, 2023). An NEA Fellow in Prose, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Nonfiction, and winner of two Florida Book Awards in poetry, Groom's work appears in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry.