Oranges at Selinunte
The cafe in the middle
Of one temple and another
Feels right. They have pastries
And espresso and a plexiglass box of oranges
Ripe for squeezing.
I order an espresso because.
Then I ask for an orange. How stupid
To arrive without fruit. I am determined
To leave an offering. I forget
Almost everything including doctor appointments
And intimate partner violence.
I am fine.
There are oranges.
There are tombs.
I put fruit in my bag.
Thistle, snail shells, dust, hard sun
Making me holy in its light. I lived here
I know here
I made this walk
I carried this fruit
I saw these goats
They saw me
On the hill was the gorgon
With her sneer
And we felt safe. This was family.
We cursed and smiled,
It was hot but the sea curled over the hill.
I lost
So much. Bending over
A stone I pretend is God, whispering
Where is home, please take me
Dig
Archaeology is self-injury, I want
To visit the museum
Where everyone’s murder
Underwear is blasted under white light
In a sad little room.
We are so in love
With ritual, I have prayed deeply
To wake elsewhere in time,
In a building overlooking the sea,
Everyone gossiping about what
To make for dinner, who didn’t have sardines at the market,
Whose kid is behaving like an animal, wanting
Wanting to fall into a fantasy swirl —
Oh hi, I am from the future, I don’t know I don’t know I wish I knew
Will you just take me
To the crack where hell spills out of the Earth and let me
Inhale black death and be
Eye to eye with it?
Before Mary Was
Oh, I prayed. Walked into the black
Box and told a stranger lies
To make it seem I was worse.
I did not want to bore the priest
Like a child entertains her elders
With smiles and twirls.
A woman burned a hole
In my Communion veil with her Virginia Slim.
Very fitting, terrible, solemn,
Tiny hands forming triangles
All so clean instead
Of death humming
Inside, insisting
Once, I was
A woman long dead
Who buried her hands,
Had dusty feet, licked inside
Snail shells for slimy meat,
Everywhere, clinging
In the sun. I walk. Opening
A deep cut with a grin
As blood is power,
Makes the grain.
I don’t have to worry
About Botox or balding.
We will all die young
In the sun, in pain, but in the sun.
I am a devotee.
The god is my sea.
I collect wild parsley.
Before all that was good and kind
Was the veil and the door.
We all kept our eyes
On the moon and what fell
From the trees.
Burial was simple.
No one was pure.
What was a sin.
I lie, have always lied, I am the queen of lies.
My heels drag. I never
Sleep, but I must have known
Salt crusting skin, once, and was free.
Patricia Grisafi, PhD, is a New York City-based freelance writer, editor, and occasional professor. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Guardian, LARB, CNN, NBCThink, MSNBC, VICE, Bustle, Narratively, SELF, Catapult, The Rumpus, Ravishly, and elsewhere. Trish's interests include horror and the Gothic, feminism, mental health, parenting, and representations of mental illness in popular culture. She is the author of Breaking Down Plath (Jossey-Bass), a literary companion on Sylvia Plath for middle and high school students. Her debut poetry collection, Animal, is available from White Stag.