Lavina Blossom
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At the Reform School for Loud Children
Ms. Grimalda leads a game in which each child in turn
stars as an object. The featured
boy or girl is allowed muted non-word sounds
to convey the thing he or she has become. Grimalda tells
a story of someone chased by a god, then turned into a tree. She
asks, What are the sounds of leaves? What are the sounds of kettles,
urns, windmills, doors? The children complain that they are not allowed
to choose their roles. No power drills. No dynamite. Grimalda
says “Hush now.” She counts slowly to twenty-three while a child struggles
to hold still, utter, not syllables, but one or two faint grunts or squeaks.
When they grumble and fight and shout that it’s a stupid
game, she says, No, it is practice for the day when the gods
appear again. Then, if a boy or girl fails to please him, a god
will change that child into something without hands or feet
or a mouth. Yet, if prepared, a girl might manage to murmur, sigh, click
or cluck in the nature of the shape in which she is stuck. The parents
of a boy would surely overlooked him unless he had mastered silence, or
near silence, unless his mother or father had noticed him once or twice
as still as the furnishings, knew him by his poise
and demeanor, his singular stance. Yet, he would improve his chances, too,
by developing a talent for signaling, ever so skillfully, that he was truly
theirs and human inside. Show you can command attention with your
presence, then by subtle sounds. And never fear, if parents continue past, blind to
their own offspring, unable to see or recognize them, Grimalda herself will
hear and cast a counter-spell to release those the gods have stricken.
She says, consider the harm in filling the world with a din, drowning
out the sounds of bygone children who fell out of favor and were transformed.
Must they be forgotten, forever rigid and lost? It will not be easy, but with
patience, if you hone your skills and talents for resisting
the cold arms of metal, the brittle gloss of porcelain, the grainy
flammable stiffness of wood, all may turn out well. I do not say, be good. I say
that to stand or sit, arms down, lips closed, is wise. And I do not
say, be silent. I say, teach others to listen by listening. Children,
this could save your lives. Grimalda says, learn, while you can.
Merry-Go Limbo
Not a place for fun. A quiet ride
on ponies, taxidermy specimens with stiff
limbs. One lacks a glass eye, others
an ear, a tail, a mane. Nostrils flared, lips apart,
they heave up in a sigh of tinny notes and lower
in counter-point. Pierced by poles, they
turn and turn to the same
quavering tune. And each night. No sleep
for the sexless equine forms or
for the children. They circle together, neither
saved nor damned. Gray sand blows onto
the bared teeth of the beasts, shifts
and accumulates over the fairgrounds
to just below the level of the grinding
platform-wheel. It does not rise higher, does not
hinder the circling or stop the calliope, merely
coats with the finest powder
the hovering hooves
and the small dangling shoes.
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Lavina Blossom grew up in rural Michigan. She divides her creative hours between poetry and painting (mainly collage and mixed media). She has an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of California, Irvine, and her poems have appeared in various journals, including The Paris Review, The Literary Review, Kansas Quarterly and poemeleon. Her short story “Blue Dog” appeared in the online journal Women Writers. She is an Associate Editor, Poetry, for Inlandia: a Literary Journey.