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).
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