Marguerite Harrold
Coming Home
1. Thanksgiving
It was always a meat buffet at our house
Beast against beast
Bleached cleanliness mixed with boiled pig flesh slouched near the door
Cigarette smoke hovered above the sweating window
A slice of chaos peeked from the corner
Here we were what we are
And we were not above pissing on something just so no one else would touch it
We gleefully watched them flip out
Cruelty was often our favorite form of entertainment
Casual as we were about it You’d think there’d have been more prescriptions around
Some people come home for the food
Our people came for the fight
No side neutral
Everyone armed with animosity and tongues and forks
The Drunkards scurried down to the basement
Far away from the kitchen Shit starters
Who drank pot after pot of coffee
And paid me to gather information
I coveted their confidences
Catching lies like inch worms cupped in my tiny brown hands
The Smokers always went outside
The only ones who’d come back peaceful
2. First Lessons
There was bewitching and listening
A switching out of culture flaws
For money For cigarettes For fun
These secrets take many forms
There was sweeping of shoes and voodoo dolls snuck in granddaddy’s jacket pocket
Trailed crumbs of voices spat across the room
There was teaching of manners and man manipulation
Survival
In any situation there were ways They’d tell me when I got older
In any complication that rattles my mind and leaves me lost in the forest of failing
I call and all them come
3. Puberty
No blood yet
Though we’ve cleared the room by now
We me & mom go at it like bears during mating season
Sometimes ripping off our own arms to beat each other
Everyone else held their breath
As if she’d steal it
They hoped in my corner
She would not take my last
4. Love Poem for My Mom
You builder balancing community on your back bound to babies everyone’s
What you drop we picked up running hot on your heels
Dreams of things better plans and promises
Christmas catalogue’s dog eared pages wishes circled make it make it
Me grown up and far enough away from you
To make my own and take over your habitat
I know you always envied my choice not to
My independence as survival strategy
Your daydreams mildewed while you were hatching capers and having babies
You passed me the lighter
On your couch our silliness ensues
Our photo hangs sideways
Make it
If skin were liquid, wild songs this love would grow
5. Three Marguerites
Facing
Our battles
We all three won
I brought the rain Slicing through periwinkle sky like a super hero razor blade
Cutting shit out Bleeding the belly empty
Mom the wind Rustling red dusty skin off the mountainside
Sliding like a six year old Waving black & green
Mother is the hurricane
Pulling roots past predictions
Placing streams upside Sowing rivers down
Mangroves wrapped around her wrist Bracing
Only the sacred oaks can stand her
They lean in
Whisper
Soothe
We ask and make offerings We hold and transcribe We
Oshun
Oya
Yemaya
In a ruckus embrace
We three
Everything made New
Bio
Marguerite L. Harrold’s work is a revolutionary act of kindness, gratitude, agitation and community mobilization. Her poems thread the ecology of being human through urban and rural landscapes, in order to explore the ways in which we connect to place, dislocation and to one another. She earned a Masters of Fine Art in Creative Writing/Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. Marguerite was nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prize (Matador Review). She was also nominated for a 2020 Illinois Arts Council grant (Chicago Review) and was a 2020 finalist for an Allied Arts Council grant. She is a member of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and attended the Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers Conference. She has poems published or forthcoming in the following journals: Anti-Heroin Chic, The Blue Nib, Jubilat, pulpmouth, The Chicago Review, and more.
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