Ars Poetica Dreamscape
Maddie Barone
Maddie Barone is a queer poet from the South. They received their MFA from the University of South Carolina. Their work has appeared in The Madison Review, Miracle Monocle, Pedestal Magazine, and is forthcoming in The Penn Review, Pinch, and elsewhere. They have a cat called Goose.
skin peeled back from bone
mother plucks a rabbit picked fresh
hands shaped into smiles
our father standing somewhere
we can’t see the heated air a fist
waving fruitfully at the sun
in these dreams i am five years old
my hair so blonde it turns haystack
my face the small version of my mother’s
freckled nose shaving sunburnt excess
onto the soft pink of a dress
i itch to transform
my mother dressing me like a doll
a plaything in pigtails and bows leaving
me still and silent in this cold yard
as my sisters dig holes in the mulch
flower beds palms searching
for the guinea pigs we buried years ago
growing piles of stones worms bits of glass
until boxes produce themselves little
rodent bodies still stuck in slumber
decayed heads strawberries melting
in dulling daylight red paste running
from elbow to wrist
other times us sisters stand in the window
watching our mother standing in grass
the yard through glass a dancing thing
scattering our bodies swiftly
our parents shifting from object to idea
to fragmented reflection
our mother’s throat elongated and stilted
a balanced chime ringing shallowly
sky dissolving like ash coming apart
my mother lying on her back in dirt
while around us shifting trees petal
trunks expand thick-skinned clouds
become my mother’s hands
birds molt scales that drop down
the whole backyard splintering
jagged and hard toothed and shiny
while above us the sun re-makes itself
as large as any constructed star can will itself to be