Here Is The Mark Of The Girl
Rooned! she said. Rooned, rooned, rooned! and her mother, coming off her chair, or from the cupboards, begged her to calm down, to speak the word truly, as it was meant to be said. Ru–ined. The girl’s lips wouldn’t taste it. Girl left the bench, stormed outside, to a small bump in the front yard where she bent to lift the garden hose that was at her feet. She was tired of the rehearsal, the metronome. Surely, she thought she could take something else, this or any garden object, to yank and yank, to follow her around and speak her will. Why couldn’t she wet all this ground, like a man, and make any space ripe with her want?
R-o-o-n-e-d
The word was a whole house,
Drawn out by vowel
And disaster. Rooned,
The word was a whole life
Endangered,
Enchanted. To be rooned,
To be woman wasn’t
A choice; it was a
Befalling, was risky
Arrival to this land,
Fleshed with want,
Flushed with god.
She imagined herself
Losing their love,
Then losing the victim’s
Vision. But the curse of self
Was handsome
And the wringing her hands
Of her own wrong
Doing would be great.
What she inherited, she
Polluted. There was
Her obsession with language,
Of mother’s mother’s
Mothering tongue, of so much
Matriarch, of so many
Church-going voices lecturing
Blah blah blah no
Children out of wedlock,
Saying this to the girls
As if to make marriage
A wanted status, chain
And lock or roon. The word
Was a whole chorus,
And she ever-teetering
Towards it, plotted her fall
Between the organ keys
That tickled her acolyte sleeve,
Loud toll of their worst nightmare.
She dared dig in, cajole the
Perversion. Rooned, a whole
Nation away from god,
No other America
Understanding the way
This region lived,
And how she buttered
Her hands in its dirt
Slightly saved,
Slightly suicidal.
She was a rooning girl.
Sin balanced on her
Lips like memory work,
And she held the pewter
Baby, a messiah
In her hand, sang a hymn,
While brushing the red-
Tipped pages of her
Hymnal, that so many days
Of Christian acceptance
Had blessed her with.
Sundays she rose
From bed, legs shaking
As she walked towards
The sanctuary, her muscles
Full of becoming
Sexual desire. She felt
The congregation open
Its mouth to say Thanks
Be to God, as she pulled
At the wad of white
Tights that’d gone
Loose around her crotch,
Felt how life in this church,
In a woman’s body,
Would always be a-fidget,
A failing. She straightened
Her back, having interpreted
The mother’s look.
For them, she must always be
Waiting but also very ready
To give. As she followed
The goers down the aisle,
Swallowed the body, the blood,
As she, walking primly, understood
The contortion her frame
Must make to live the righteous
Pain of ceremony,
She felt the blister
That had been heaving there,
In the back pew of her shoe,
Go taut and pop. Rooned,
The word, her whole parable.
Carrie Chappell is a writer, editor, educator, and translator. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Carrie is interested in exploring feminine personae and the narration of lives of women as they confront a conflicting nostalgia for and injury perpetuated by Western structures of prejudice, particularly those apparent in her homeland of the U.S. American South. Some of her poetry has been published in Harpur Palate, Nashville Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, SWWIM, and Yemassee. Currently, she lives in Paris, France, and serves as Poetry Editor for Sundog Lit.