Christine Jessica Margaret Reilly is pursuing her MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence University. She received a BA in psychology and English: creative writing at Bucknell University. Two of her poems will be featured in The Clearing: Forty Years with Toni Morrison, 1970-2010, by James Braxton Peterson and Carmen Gillespie. Christine’s work has been published in 16 literary journals (editor’s pick in Breadcrumb Scabs!) and featured in an African Blues Art installation piece.
Cochlea
By Christine Jessica Margaret Reilly
Children who live on the beach do not have bedtimes–
only parents with gray-churning hair who call out to them
in the heat of the night. I believed in different things
then, like that the moon could have one hundred bones
growing inside. Moons were mothers too
and each planet had at least one:
a pulpy mess breathing, extending
like the leaves of a chicory plant. I believed
in my mother’s nightgown, the breadth of it
landing on my head. She had bones like
a mollusk. I could swear I heard them
cracking and popping as she half-buried
seconds of me in her memory.
Ma, I told her, Watch me swim.
She called out, what? I can’t hear you.
I told her to read my lips, watch
sweet-salted sinking ships.
She told me I would be leaving her
too soon–a bone drifting away in the ocean.
My hair brilliantly shining like kerosene,
my again–tone-deaf–like the heart of her ear.
She was older than me and could understand
the tragedy of indigo, of children leaving.
My mother had trouble hearing. She broke
part of her cochlea as she watched each ship curve away.
I did not believe in rooms with corners,
in fruit that freckles on the inside,
or in anything ordinary. There was a lot
I could not understand back then:
my memory a newborn slate, spoondrifted.
