INGREDIENTS

ANDREA GILHAM

Add peanuts—
found in dynamite.  A rocking chair and 

the story from my aunt Jane 
where she woke on a table, age 6

her drunk father’s fat face inches 
above hers.  Here the story is vague—

because vagueness is a form of preservation.  Her mama 
shot him dead as a doornail.  That gun 

in that rocking chair will do.  Also,
add the broken voice of my grandma-  

her stroke raped language, but add her 
aww, baby, shit, figger and other mumblings 

doe eyes that told me everything when
her lips always failed.  Add a blue Kentucky 

sweatshirt—locked away in some evidence locker 
a November night ground into a shoulder blade.  Also, 

that willow where human charms 
hung from her branches.  Then a sheet 

and a baseball bat and cross stitch him in.  Answer the phone
always pulled from the wall.  A wail in the night 

of “Run, Susie, run!”  Reconciliation in the morning 
over a cup of black and then again.  Drop this 

in the keg and run the line sure to blow this time around.  

MOON'S CARNAGE

ANDREA GILHAM

As I undress, I take the moon 
out of my hair. In reflected light, 
rewrite myths. Seven sisters—
each a whisper in the gibbous light.
The metal against my skin—
a prescription of repose. I close 
my eyes to its beautiful desolation. A boy 
I gave birth to once stands at my right 
shoulder blade. He blames the moon
for his unquenched love—his empty palms.  
He scours the terrain, dust 
grit in his teeth; his boot-prints the greatest 
loneliness entombed.
The men are no longer speaking 
of God—the search for the Ark 
called off due to heartache. All those terrible, 
terrible animals in the ebb and flow 
of a merciful deity. The cries 
in the moonless night—
a silent taxi-ride until in all her 
fullness, we are forced out.
The clouds shift. I take a cigarette in my foreign 
hand—cratered out from the living 
and congratulate us all. 

"There are so many shiny objects that detract from real living. To be present means to take notice and act. The poem is action—the anger, the beauty, the desolation."

Andrea Gilham received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She currently resides in Mount Vernon, Indiana, with her husband and two children.