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Poems SUSIE CAMPBELL from Little red mouth (from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford) o These stories crack between my bloody teeth. I want to go home. He took me in his chariot. Golden branches spill their bronze leaves. Just one ruby seed. How to find words through mouthfuls of plastic wrapping, this most terrible year on earth that feeds so many and what we bring back out of the ground. These mysteries from black earth as bread is for the living. This pomegranate, its sisterhood of dark seeds. We hold one on the tongue. And suddenly it’s and suddenly it’s Death coming closer to town. o Whether I was trying to seal my lips or m ake a space, finger curled over thumb, my mouth filled with my own hand. One scented seed against my lip. What breach what trickery or force? Language can’t fill this hungry space. When we find each other again what we need to know a tear in the text 22 The Poetry Review
page 23
Poems torn at the very moment at the very moment when we need to know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. o Why shouldn’t it happen here in a country of marigold and mallow. And why not in this house with locked windows and she disguising her beauty looking like an old woman told by the same story as we are, made by women’s work to protect women’s secrets. For a mother, a daughter and her daughter’s daughter, we knead and prove from generation to generation, her russet braid leading us to the underworld and back. Fruit curved and sealed around the base, I am its daughter, my palate hardened around its abundance and this body a template. o How did you get there? I don’t remember. Where is the place? I don’t remember. How many years ago was it? I don’t know. 23 The Poetry Review

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Poems

SUSIE CAMPBELL from Little red mouth (from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford)

o

These stories crack between my bloody teeth. I want to go home. He took me in his chariot. Golden branches spill their bronze leaves. Just one ruby seed. How to find words through mouthfuls of plastic wrapping, this most terrible year on earth that feeds so many and what we bring back out of the ground. These mysteries from black earth as bread is for the living. This pomegranate, its sisterhood of dark seeds. We hold one on the tongue. And suddenly it’s

and suddenly it’s Death coming closer to town.

o

Whether I was trying to seal my lips or m ake a space, finger curled over thumb, my mouth filled with my own hand. One scented seed against my lip. What breach what trickery or force? Language can’t fill this hungry space. When we find each other again what we need to know a tear in the text

22 The Poetry Review

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