Three Poems by Melanie Perish

What the Godmothers Told of Origins

Distant lands close to home. Foreign voices,
native tongues – these are cell tissue
to us. Paradox is in our marrow
just as ghosts live in the scaffolding of our bones like

native tongues. These are cell tissue:
foxfire on the downed white pine. Our ancients live
just as breath lives in the bellows of our lungs like
wind is-and-inhabits sky.

Foxfire on downed white pine, our ancients live
wings tucked in after celestial navigation, real as
wind is – and inhabit sky.
Herons and fish fly, touch down,

wings tucked in after sensory navigation, real as –
to us – paradox is. In our marrow
herons and fish fly, touch down –
distant lands close to home, foreign voices, native tongues.

Learning to Fish: Live Bait

You hand me a night crawler
from the bait box   pull your own
long and active from the pellets
of moist soil.   I watch you
stick the hook-point into the worm
inch it ‘round the bottom barb.   You ignore
the flailing head   the squirming tail   the gut ooze
that muddies your fingers.

Kids catch these at night   you tell me.
After a rain   with a bright moon   they take
flashlights    flash the ditchbank and grab.
You have to be fast with your hands
and pail.   The worms are quick too
wriggle right back
into the wet dirt when the light hits them.

Street lights hit me.
I ducked into shadow of poles squat signals in the railroad yard.

I was The yard boss never caught me
small and a girl his daughter went
so I was fast to a different school
a quick mouth his flashlight hung from his belt
I lied to save pokey Sasha the nightstick   too   he wore it
in the yard carried the storm lamp
I swiped coal he grabbed old hobos asleep   kids
from open box cars shinnying up   hiding   running

He called us all night crawlers.

You bait them   my father railed. You give them
excuse to call us   hunkies   thieves   to say
your people lazy.   Someday they break
your head   break laws in new country   break
my heart.   My mother used the coal I stole
to cook soup   burned it in the heater stove
near the room where we all slept.

You finish baiting your hook.   I begin
with mine   stop to remember   some species
struggle alone.   I expect blood trickle
the muscled twist of live bait.   I’d fight too
to keep from dying.

On Death in the Land of COVID-19

After Cesar Vallejo

I will die in the mountains on a hot day,
on a day in May, July, or October, but one
like today with no vaccine, still air, trees
as busy with photosynthesis as I am with death.

This day will include words in lines less jagged
than a granite ridge, less smooth
than beach glass, but varied as shadow-lines
on the bright ground hard with rocks and choice.

They will say, The poet chose not to start the clockworks
of her heart at Three Horse Flat near Five Lakes.
Everyone knew she’d forget to keep the mistress-key
in her back pocket. Hearts attack. Ventricular contractions

don’t always respond to voice commands. The witnesses
are Black women, pilots, miners. They include
brook trout, cairns – a mouse caught in hawk’s talons –
or the magpies that eat death and fly.

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Melanie Perish’s poems have appeared in Sinister Wisdom, Calyx, Willawaw Journal, Brushfire, Desertwood (University of Nevada Press, 1991), Emerging Poets (Z-Publishing, 2018,2019), di-vêrsé-city (AIPF, 2017-2019), in addition to Passions & Gratitudes (Black Rock Press,2011), a collection of her poetry. Sometimes crabby/always grateful, she is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc. Poetry, friendship, and social justice are the organizing principles of her life. She cannot imagine living anywhere except in the grace of the high desert.