Cali Linfor
NECTARINES
He's a good man.
I am laughing with nectarine in my teeth
when she says it.
Let me translate:
I should be grateful. He must be a good man to take me.
my shriveled parts, my broken-down thumbs, my mutations
and drink of them.
She notices every finger as she examines
my great-grandmother's engagement ring.
Her gaze strays to the inner arch
of my hand,
she sees
my thumb tender
without the weight of knuckles.
Her breath, sweet from milky tea, gasps at the sight
but not as much as to disturb
the necklace at her throat. My wrist
trembles as she realizes her thumb presses a scar
from my second surgery.
My smallest imperfection. Unnoticed before. Her long pause, Do you mind if I ask…?
No.
I wind out the tale of my genetics.
Will you have children?
Always the next question
disturbing me
like a stranger's hand
on a pregnant belly.
Of course.
Eyes shifting colors. Gray.
Blue.
Green.
W.E.B Dubois writes of the veil
he bears his children into. The black veil. The darkness
of hate. He loves his child
but this is his gift to him.
My womb is such a veil. I could pass this on
like a beauty mark
or crooked teeth.
Then, she says it again, He must be a good man.
The urge to spit
in her face
irresistible
to question the viability of my children
as if they were cars.
Yes, irresistible
as telling the children I grew up with
A wild dog bit off my thumbs
and he is still about
the place.
Cali Linfor teaches at SDSU, where she lectures in rhetoric, composition and writing. She served for sixteen years as poetry editor of Epicenter Literary Magazine; she has published poems, articles, and short stories in The Beloit Poetry Review, Manzanita Review, Ekphrasis, and others. Linfor was born with a genetic disability that has influenced her examinations of beauty and ugliness, and her encounters with reading and writing as a child were affected by dyslexia. Her first book, A Book of Ugly Things, appears in Lantern Tree: Four Books of Poems.
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