we kneeled in pitch-stained jeans on pine needles tiny bones and porcupine quills to measure the distance by the sound of our voices between burn barrel sparks and when we would leave in numbers reduced by the shape of the mountain broken bootlaces and songs we forgot to an address written on a bus station paperback and a road that led away from the trees
photo by Samantha Malay, Seattle, Washington, 1990
untangle words from the kitchen phone around kids eating toast in their swimsuits macaroni salad in a margarine tub pale grass where the hose was coiled
count the cuts to open a can with a keychain P-38 thistle seeds on windshield dust a duffel bag on the passenger seat
photo by Samantha Malay, Long Beach, Washington, 1989
Yelm by Samantha Malay published in The Very Edge: Poems (Flying Ketchup Press 2020) ISBN-13: 978-1-970151-23-7 shorturl.at/lqr78
you can stand in the doorway to look at the night and pray against a family fate of muddy yards and porch pianos
seek comfort in upkeep wasps beyond the ladder’s reach a sliver of soap on the edge of the sink the glitter of glass shards beneath a broom
picture yourself covered in leaves pockets emptied of matchbooks and coins limbs no longer hinged for gait far from the grasp of hasty plans
photo by Samantha Malay, Seattle, Washington, 1991
Loose ends, my brother and sister and I emerged from tree-canopy and Oregon rain to stay in a noisy house in Kettle Falls. We’d lived without faucets or refrigerators but knew the names of many plants and how to detect thunder on the horizon.
The three of us ate grocery store chicken and bean salad on a TV tray and watched shows we’d never seen before, tight polyester pants and laugh tracks and deodorant ads. The livingroom was separated from the murky kitchen by a grey metal tool shelf cluttered with jars of root-water spider plants and dust. Pans sat abandoned in the sink, a greasy dishtowel shoved through the oven handle. Stacks of mail crowded car keys and a pair of nail clippers on the counter. Joke books floundered on the toilet tank. The sprinkler ran until the lawn was a swamp. At first it felt like a dangerous vacation.
Across the street from a cemetery, 665 Kalmia Street was full of belongings and furniture in uncomfortable relationships, as if people had moved in and weren’t finished unpacking, or were just about to move out. Mom lived there with her boyfriend Jerry and his two sons, Tom and Bruce, high school seniors, a grade skipped or failed by one or the other, who couldn’t have resembled each other less if they’d been unrelated. Bruce had frizzy hair like his girlfriend. Barely six years older, they looked at me from the land of adults, where candlewax covered nightstands and albums were stacked against walls. Ashtrays were filled, bottles were emptied, then slowly filled again with discarded coins.
Sheila slept on a window seat near the wall phone under paper curtains printed with blue and purple hydrangeas. I had the floor of the broom closet off the kitchen. Maybe Ben got the couch. We kept our clothes in a cardboard box.
My new classmates incubated chicken eggs. We broke the shell of the unhatched one, saw a fully-formed creature, wet feathers, closed eyes, feet and legs curled.
On the last day of school, water balloons soaked our shirts and jeans. I sat on a log with my friends at the edge of the playground, where the field met the parking lot. I wrote letters to them that summer, when we returned to the cabin. I tried to feather my hair in the reflection on the porch window, but it had grown too long, so I went back to barrettes.
Our family unraveled, in time measured in maps and missing report cards and not enough money for stamps.
photo by Samantha Malay, on the way to Onion Creek, Washington, 1990
Between
by Samantha Malay
published in Shark Reef – A Literary Magazine, issue 36
trespass quietly
to smell the end of summer
in the sundown trees
and lunchbox rust
an uneven history
of bee-stings and scorch
branches broken to fit in the stove
dirt from other towns still on our shoes
photo by Samantha Malay, Friday Harbor, Washington, 1989
when we no longer live in our bodies
do we inhabit the spaces between
voices cupped in bedspread folds
hands around a match
winter kitchen cookbook stains
unmarked keys
missing teeth
tufts of feather and bone?
see me in the lath and plaster
clothesline tied to cherry trees
empty spools
diaper pins
carpenter ants and gutter vines
One spring we slept in a canvas tent
near an abandoned homestead
at the edge of a field.
My parents and their friend Gunner
salvaged tongue-and-groove boards for a summer shack
peeled logs for our cabin
and tried to keep the yellowjackets off their sweat.
After the sun went down
and the trees blended with the night
they drank Lucky beer in short brown bottles
and laughed while they solved the puzzles
inside the caps.
The top bunk bed was mine
and when I couldn’t sleep
I watched the patterns on the ceiling
made by the kerosene lamp below.
When Gunner left the next summer
his car bent the weeds that grew down the middle of the road
that led away from our property.
We dug holes for bottles around the garden
to scare the gophers
with the sound of the wind inside the glass.