"Fear", "Forgiveness", "Scent of Sorrow", & "Rose Petals in Your Mouth" by Chella Courington

Fear

It isn’t the tumor then

but the tumor remembered

cut from the breast

the breast chiseled from the bone

rising in dreams

or at the margins of whispered denial

when, startled, she feels it

how it might, again, pull at her nipple

and slip through her ribs

like a cat prowling

Forgiveness

In Santa Fe you find me

late afternoon sun at my back

hips wider than yours gathering

skulls We roam red hills—

ocher orange purple earth

cracked by hot blowing sand

A solitary penitent dark veil

over torso trudges near

You kiss my scars ghosts of my breasts

under the evening bells of St. Francis

Scent of Sorrow

Grief is something

you can smell

like the rose petals

my mother kept

in a blue bowl

their essence

growing over time

attaching to the words

she spoke

so when she passed

her breath gone

her voice scattered

through the house

in particles

of fragrance

Rose Petals in Your Mouth

You spit out love songs only I hear

my cochlea hollow bone spiraled

waiting for you to slide through

your sweet tongue muscular & soft

I sing & shriek & sometimes talk

in tongues

Chella Courington (she/her) is a writer/teacher whose poetry and fiction appear in numerous anthologies and journals including DMQ Review, The Los Angeles Review, and New World Writing.A Pushcart and Best New Poets Nominee, Courington was raised in the Appalachian south and now lives in Central California. She has a recent microchap of poetry, Good Trouble, Origami Poems Project, and a forthcoming microchap, Hell Hath, Maverick Duck Press.