Kara Dorris
ANTIQUE MALL: BENBROOK, TEXAS
We walk gently, aisle by aisle tracing objects
with heated fingers, plunder fabricated dining rooms,
closets, & libraries—your hands linger on romantic pins,
costume rhinestones sewn into bracelets & earrings.
We amble past the splintered & inked printer's tray
spooning the painting of a moose
spooning the river. The river leads
us towards vintage dresses, all lace & moth holes,
to ladies' hats like bird nests. You pause before
the painting of two horses along a fence line,
gray & roan, watery in watercolors.
You want to offer, palm-up, some version of comfort.
We worry; these objects don't merely exist for us to take.
They have histories, chips, & marker initials.
A person existed somewhere for every object,
a person exists: the elephant music box, beer bottle ceiling light,
Grand Canyon postcards, stained glass windows,
pink elephant drink stirrers, & door knobs.
The glass unicorn with crisscross wings
& wedded legs, the one your mother gave you,
is a member of a glass animal zoo.
You pass, aisle by aisle, & imagine a thousand lives,
maybe a thousand versions of your own,
each life changed by each item bought, items warmed
by the hands of others: the U.S.S Arizona in a bottle,
Scarlet O'Hara plate, Waterford crystal—
each sits on your mantle.
You may never know what ghosts, what memories
you've lent a home to, but you wonder.
& so item by item, imagine yourself into history.
* * *
ELEGY FOR EULOGY, TX & AND THE RIVER THAT WAS
Can we still call it a riverbed
when it's infested only with moss & dew, tadpoles
& the baby jumpers they grow into?
We feel our way with our eyes,
not the soles of our feet, we slog only through
the heaviness of heat—
10 feet tall & 10 feet wide, water rushes beneath
the highways in pipes, beneath the hooves
& muzzles of livestock, bales of hay.
Water rushes from a manmade lake into a natural one,
into the betrayed side of the dammed riverbed,
the life of the never-should-have-been
exchanged for the dying.
Water stolen to cool the nearby nuclear plant.
Don't worry, my stepdad says,
the reactor isn't as big as it seems.
The 10 story walls, 13 feet thick, are just for containment.
Can we call it reassurance & mean illusion?
Who knew water could act like a pack of snakes,
embed itself as easily in absence as presence—
that stone mimicked the flow of water,
could take water's place when dammed—
as we walk the dry riverbed, tiny frogs jump
away from our feet. We must seem 10 stories tall.
* * *
PRAYER FOR WINTER
Dear lord, where is the release,
when I will know
everything is possible
& suddenly nothing is necessary?
Each morning, I tend pecan orchards
& trim our table in bread.
As if my hands are baskets, I reach & pull,
bend & lift, filling & filling until
I can't fill anymore.
You have seen it, I know, you
who must know the texture & weight
of everything & hate it.
I feel less like myself when I harvest,
less like my skin is a soaked dress
& more like you. Like you, I steal
from scavengers who mistake
themselves for the sum of the world.
It's an innocent crime, you might say,
a power play, a shadow, an omen.
This is when the white buffalo,
dressed in snow drifts, calls my name,
choking on wind & distance. Only you know
if, or when, we will meet.
Lord, you know I try.
Each day I go out, bend & lift until
my weaved hands are full.
But am I only duty's bit & whip?
Lord, tell me I am more
than the pack animal broken long ago,
carrying satchels of splinters & hollow pecans,
who only disbelieves in rescue & relief.
Kara Dorris is a PhD candidate at the University of North Texas. She received her
MFA from New Mexico State University in 2009. Her poetry has appeared in The Tusculum
Review, The Tulane Review, Harpur Palate, Wicked Alice,
Cutbank, Prick
of the Spindle, Stone Highway Review, Crazyhorse and Sk
idrow Penthouse among others literary journals, as well the anthology Beauty is a Verb.
Dancing Girl Press published her first chapbook, Elective Affinities, in 2011. Finishing Line Press
published her second chapbook, Night Ride Home,
in 2012. She is the editor of an online literary journal, Linger post.
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