Foundry
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still life with pedigree

at school they’d say     why do you talk like that
 
is what you think you are        nice      goody two
 
            in contrast to / as opposed       ?
 
but really: have you inherited a dozen ways
 
                                   to say your name differently,
 
as in                 do you really think
                        he’s like us?
 
 
 
 
                                                                                               and my father means the man
 
I love     who was raised up in a country church         who has an accent       do I think he’s [                                               ] enough /
 
a clutch of adjectives /             my hair wrapped around my own       skinny neck
 
walking down an aisle             for my first Communion, promising to believe something
 
I could not yet name. swearing to leave God knows what      on the altar / to be an altar
 
to commune with a dusty sort of holiness       [swearing to something in Latin / to a swath
of pink lilies]                 although flowers make me sneeze            I’m allergic to certain inheritances                               but others I wear                        light as the veil that day
Picture
William Henry Fox Talbot. “Veil”: Engine Ruled Lines, Crossed at Right Angles, possibly July 29, 1859. Photographic engraving, 15.6 × 13.8 cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Irène Mathieu is a pediatrician, writer, and global public health researcher. She is winner of the Bob Kaufman Book Prize and Yemassee Journal’s Poetry Prize, and author of the book orogeny (Trembling Pillow Press, 2017) and poetry chapbook the galaxy of origins (dancing girl press & studio, 2014). Irène has received fellowships from the Fulbright Program and the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. She is on the speakers’ bureau for Jack Jones Literary Arts. For more, please visit her website: www.irenemathieu.com.
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    • Issue Thirteen
    • Issue Fourteen
    • Issue Fifteen
  • Guidelines