Three poems by DeAni Blake

How to Murder a Mule

Beat a tree with whatever you can find—an old bat,

a torque wrench, your fists—until you match 

the rhythm of her groans.

Strip her, skin her, 

and let her hide hang from the clothesline of her body—

loose enough to keep her cold,

convenient enough for you to wrap yourself in her

whenever you want.

Starve her of your compassion 

and when she can’t take it anymore, 

fill her pail with lies. Tell her you love her.

Want more than she can give

and pack her with more than she can carry.

Beat her with whatever you can find—your fists, an old bat, 

a hammer—until you create the rhythm of her groans.

Listen to her bones snap and give.

Look into her eyes and feel nothing.

Take your shovel and dig a three-foot hole

because hard soil is too tough for you. Take

whatever looms in that place where your heart should be

and use it to bury her. 

Tendrils

Your mother was young once. 

Your mother was young once. 

Your mother was young once. 

You recite this like the name of a stranger.

This truth only occurs to you while you’re not thinking of her—

while you’re staring at a woman on a book cover so long

her gray hairs vine and pin her beneath the title. 

There are vines that still your mother 

in a place she’s known longer than she’s known you—

what to make of it all—

Of a woman besides a mother.

Of a mother otherwise a woman.

DeAni Blake is an emerging African American writer and editorial assistant for The New Territory magazine. Her writing has appeared in several issues of Lincoln University’s Arts & Letters literary journal, Sigma Tau Delta’s Rectangle, and The Gasconade Review (forthcoming).