By Sharon Coleman

she shed words like her sister’s hand-me-down anger               mis-sewn dress

she folded into slow july streams, tall dry grasses                   over warm granite

of a coast they were moved up and down           too many times          she slept

where the first story                was hammered into the second                   across

a threshold nailed shut                                               the new music of those years

was sadder than the old                 she’d sit in her grandmother’s wooden chair

mouth words              blackberry thorns               ripe fig’s skin            raw lemon

she sat spine straight                                           in those years the muscles inside

her thighs grew taut           stomach toughened        contour awoke in her face

*

she held the needle over a spinning record                   poised to scratch or play

she re-played mustard jars her sister threw, and butter knives                against

another new home                    as old as it was                  her sister tried to settle

sanded the floors of the first story                  the second hovered beyond them

when the stone fireplace grew to the ceiling       her sister walked into flames

their father pulled her out                long hair smoldering                small flames

at the edges of her blouse                   wetness straightened waves of their hair

the sisters took turns                  on the kitchen stool                 their mother took

a long comb, pointed scissors        evened them out in ways her mother could

*

in those years radios buzzed flat seventies’ songs                   lodged like fallout

at the back of her throat                     records her sister had brought home, left

when her sister left             she listened to coastal winds that coursed through

a gap in the hills, eddied in her ears                                          she pulled her hair

down over them                       over warm cave walls                      vibrating bone

she took to music older than grandmother’s wooden chair             her mother

hummed notes simply            without words               cut squash and tomatoes

took out mozart and satie        whose flaking covers smelled of acid and earth

whose music wrapped in patterns                       her spine branched into sound

*

she moved her bed and unread books                                   books her sister sent

to the story above                                            a crate of old music stashed behind

her grandmother’s chair        she sat     away from the geiger counters of men

and their songs                                muscles broadened over the back of her ribs

her cheeks drew back to their framework                         the house below grew

distant, quieter anger                 september weeds folded into dust             sand

loosened clay-lined soil          she deepened creases in the spines of old books

she began in chalk               continued in pencil               she hummed to words

ocean wind         buckling threshold           spirit fire        over the spinning vinyl


Sharon Coleman’s a fifth-generation Northern Californian with a penchant for languages and their entangled word roots. She writes for Poetry Flash, co-curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and co-directs the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She the author of a chapbook of poetry, Half Circle, and a book of microfiction, Paris Blinks (Paper Press, 2016).

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