Reanimated Lavender Granola Switchblade Nun rides again.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

The Girl With The Arrow Through Her Head

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry;
'Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy'

I am the girl with the arrow through her head;
people treat me like some sort of cartoon,
a joke,
they think it's a get-up.

I can't wear hats,
or walk down the street without my neighbors Bob and John
telling me I should have ducked
and then laughing like dickheads.

Dear Excedrin,
I write,
I love your product.
Thank you for making it.
They send me coupons, which pleases me,
and I use them immediately.

I was Custer's girl.
I was there when he died;
it was awful.
He was blond, and brave, and beautiful.
I tried to stop them from desecrating him, 
but the Indian women tossed me aside like a dandelion flower
and I had to walk home.

That was in 1876.
I was twenty.
I don't know why I don't die;
maybe the arrow changed me in some way I can't account for.
I have dreams that manifest in my life the next day.
I dream that I am a girl with an arrow through her head,
and that Bob and John find me endlessly hilarious.
Then I am,
and they do.

I have to sleep on my back
because of the arrow.
I lie down in my yard at night and look at the stars.
They turn,
and I turn,
which makes the arrow turn, too, 
and I feel just like a new clock, right on the money every time.

Then I remember--
Autie is dead,
and I am a girl with an arrow through her head.
Tonight I will dream of eating a pomegranate,
and then an orange.
I will turn them in my hands,
and they will turn me with them;
something will be different,
and when I wake up, it will all happen as I dreamed it--

The pomegranate will heal my heart,
and the orange will contain endless sections, juicy and sweet.
Bob and John will not be home when I walk by;
the arrow will fall out,
and I will be free.
__________

quoted lines at the top are from "The Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti.

for the Real Toads birthday in December--Christina Rossetti. 

19 comments:

  1. you 'see' things (and make us see them, too) like no one i've ever 'met'. :)

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  2. Wow. Shock, humor, epiphanies; this piece had it all. I can picture someone like del Toro turning this into a movie (or at least a short).

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  3. Free? Not you Shay. You are in thrall to words.

    ALOHA from Honolulu
    Comfort Spiral
    =^..^=


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  4. Your arrow feels like the crutch of time. We all are indebted to it~
    Remembering the sweet sections makes me smile~ I think I know Bob n' John ;D (Bob Seger and John Denver)
    How odd we both did go to the plains?! I love your story like poems-they transcend time! YOU do grow a lovely word garden~

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  5. I'd like a ticket to the inside of your mind...

    So many sections I love but if I had to pick a favorite it would be:

    "the Indian women tossed me aside like a dandelion flower
    and I had to walk home."

    And I love how vivid your fruit section of this poem is...I could nearly see the juice running.

    Great read, Shay...you're on fire blossom. :)

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  6. Such varied voices come from your pen, Shay.

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  7. Oh my goodness. When you write, you never run out of words. When I read, there are simply no words good enough.

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  8. OMGosh, Shay... this is fabulous.
    "...telling me I should have ducked..." I love how your mind works.
    xo jj

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  9. This is so extraordinarily imaginative, Shay. I don't know why but this section really appeals to me:

    I have to sleep on my back
    because of the arrow.
    I lie down in my yard at night and look at the stars.
    They turn,
    and I turn,
    which makes the arrow turn, too

    So much seems possible within these lines; I read them as a metaphor for life. I think we collect a lot of arrows in the course of living, some in the head, some in the heart, some in the limbs...

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  10. Captivating read. Dark and sad, riding on dark wings of history. Yet some awesome dark humor.. Indeed it's hard to wear a hat with an arrow through your head

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  11. she makes her dreams real. how many of us can do that? then again, maybe most of us do - we just dream poorly.

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  12. Vivid and surreal, what seems to be a dream becomes real, what seems real becomes a history lesson,tossed away, and the goblin fruit are, as always, most delicious of all, in a place where time turns on an arrow sundial and pretty much everything else becomes irrelevant. Pain is both defining and absolving here, Shay--excellent transmutation of Rossetti's penchant for writing out what makes memory pierce.

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  13. And yet, when you sleep, only the arrow sings to you.

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  14. Didn't Steve Martin start out with an arrow through his head?

    But he's not near as eloquent as you!

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  15. I was intrigued by the same lines as Kerry - (one to many likes? in that last line, though? - and I feel just like…

    Each stanza is a bit different approach - indignant, practical, thankful, reminiscent, questioning, explanatory, dreamer, upbeat.

    …and everyone - creative.

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  16. I want to grab the sleeves of everyone I know and say "Read this! I know her (sort of a lie, but...) and this is just one example of her brilliance!" They would ask me where you are from. I would answer, "A place none of us has even heard of."

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  17. This is so cool and trippy. Love this, girl!

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Spirit, what do you wish to tell us?