The End is Here
(Response to “I Know the End” by Phoebe Bridgers)
Do you remember how the trees caught fire?
How they held the flames like a sacred heart
in a Catholic prayer.
Small particles caught
in electric silence. You said,
“High pressure hugs the sky to red.”
Like the tips of my bare toes pressing
wet footprints into sacred stone.
My goodbye printed on your porch.
Do you remember the words about knowing the end?
The song you played me across the reservoir.
The one you played on my brother's guitar.
Well, that night it hung in the branches like lightning
hanging low. And your voice struck
me behind the eyes as
I watched you slip inside.
I know.
Your face in the kitchen window.
I know.
“Don’t worry, they’ll dry.” I said,
“I know.”
Why did we let that rumbling weather sing?
Squeezing every blue particle from the sky.
Until the red song burned all it touched,
the trees,
the hearts,
the end.
I Never Learned Street Names
I never learned street names,
but if you start down this road,
you’ll pass the Goodwill sign with a flickered out ‘o’
and the home of a girl’s long lost teddy bear.
So, when you pass the man on the wobbly lawn chair
holding his sign painted “honk for prayers!”,
For the little girl and her bear,
you should honk and keep on driving.
Past the downtown houses squared off to dance,
is the bookstore where a girl’s first boyfriend held her hand.
From a book embossed with laurel wreaths
his free fingers trace her poetry,
and they will wave you down Main Street.
So, for the girl and her boy,
You should smile and keep on driving.
Right at the right-wing billboard,
left at the lost pet poster,
slight curve at the deer crossing punched
with bullet holes, and you are good from there.
But before you clear these directions from your mind,
like dust off a hand-me-down dash,
promise me this.
If you see a white Toyota with scratches down the doors,
the metal ribbons carved soft as a virgin’s marble veil.
If you see hippy shit hanging from the rearview,
and an anxious girl behind the wheel,
Note the nearest street sign and hurry back to me.
In a Heartbeat
Every day inside your chest,
I climb your ribcage rungs.
Tuning ventricles and valves,
I pause to wipe my bloody hands
Across my sweaty brow.
Hunchback of the greatest clock,
I wonder when you might clock out.
How after all my work, I’ll slouch,
cushioned by a plush aorta couch.
And for sake of symmetry, I’ll pour a glass
of burgundy as beats lull me to sleep.
At last, I’ll dream of siphoning the streams.
Of when I alone let canyons meet,
crimson flowing in between.
The Cicada Lullaby
I point to her as proof of God,
intricate insect of design.
Her wired wings traced with golden veins,
her ancient hieroglyphic eyes.
She is Isis, goddess of birth,
mother who molts and mourns below.
Until blossoming from her roots,
she sells her carcass to the crow.
Again, the black cloaked ravens feast,
a symphony of plucking beaks.
And deep beneath the cyclic scene,
her daughters weep a maple green.
So, when I meet her on concrete,
her breasts all crisp and legs laced dead,
I will see mothers and daughters
for whom cicadas’ screams are shed.
Melt like March
Time must melt like March,
sinking into bone like ice into earth.
I can feel it now,
swaddling my shoulders too tight.
The committal tons sitting.
I remember believing you were God.
Nailing mosquito bites,
christening my temple.
But March and mangers melt
And on the night we fought
I could feel it.
The committal tons trickling.
Stations of the daughter:
Pick it up.
I must look a bit like your mother.
Pick it up.
I can weep at your feet.
Pick it up.
When I got home, I wanted to rip all my baby pictures off the walls.
To roll the stone from my brother’s room.
To lay flat in his bed and wait to rise white as snow.
First
How long since I lost time?
Second
How long since I lost a tooth?
Third
Rebecca Hurtado is a first-year Denison University student studying Creative Writing. She is a poet, journalist, and essayist. Her publications include poems published in Cannon School’s literary magazine and Exile Magazine. She currently serves as a prose editor for Exile, Denison’s student literary and arts magazine. Rebecca grew up in North Carolina in a Cuban-American household.