Another Barnacled Doll

by ELIZABETH ANGUAMEA

Another barnacled doll washes ashore in South Texas, unsolicited smile all pistil and pollen, all mud and guts. A mother paces the front porch, bounces a weeping child on her hip. Above them, a bird sits on a nest, quieter since last night’s storm. Warming something or nothing. Everything. The pacing mother skirts the tiny sorrow. Tiny yolk, tiny white.  Beneath the porch, stinging nettle grows fast, unfettered. Tiny whitepurple buds grin all leaves and teeth and women are purled with pain stitched in. All stigma and style, all blood and rust. All around us crickets tune their instruments, a toad soaks in the dog bowl, dusk bares her teeth. A wide-one-eyed doll stares up at the darkening sky, ocean clings to her, motherless hum in her ears. So, I give her my nettle, my stinging edges, my toothy grin, my tiny burning a flood of lust. Bouncing her on my weeping hip, we trade pain for poem for empty nest.