The Body Under Threat
- The Body Under Threat
Solace, too, must rot. The bright things we labor to create fall into the soil half-formed— Our turtled backs emerge as if in prayer to shield our hearts.
Numb under the threat of this virus, I returnwith my children into our house.
My grandmothers invade my memory, their ritualsurging me to create something sweet and floury,desserts to dull the onset of dread.But ask them what protects: veil, hood, apron, mask—
The body disappears from violenceor displacement or disease.My body disappears within my body.
When I ask him to put away his iPod,one of my sons grabs my biggest vegetable knife;in the street he stabs plastic juice bottles.
He has worn his brown skin onto an American street.I am a mother, called from numbness to knowing:
knife is merely knife within a threat within many threats— [End Page 49]
I am a mother, I must transform.I must become a placid lake in which my son can swimto safety.
Perhaps he has just remembered the world,and where he was standingwhen one threat folded into another. [End Page 50]
Carrie Beyer lives in Bainbridge Island, Washington. She is the mother of three school-aged children and received her mfa from Pacific University.
