Santiam Fire
The trees burn near the Clackamas River.
Across the country my mother
has ceased to respond to simple commands.
I drive my daughter downwind of the smoke.
And my sister—in another state—decides what to text me.
The air, unmoving orange and birdless.
My mother's radiant cells, their pulsations, dimming.
Last night, I dreamed my daughter was the one in peril.
I was struggling to pull her body through the window
of a blazing building her face, all flicker and shadow.
I woke up thinking of the female body as kindling,
as fuel. It’s easiest to consider the women in my family
through metaphor. Tendrils of smoke uncurl
through pine clusters outside of the city
and I wonder at this intuition behind my ribs,
how it feels like a length of thread
being drawn through my pericardium.
Everything good about mothers and daughters
has already been written. My mother is dying
and soon my daughter will leave home. My sister
is about to press send on a message that ends:
heart first, then all else second a sentence that
belongs to this poem. Often when I write the word mother
I mean it as a synonym for loss. I watch my daughter
in the rearview mirror headphones on.
Her eyes close at the good part of a song
I can’t hear. Sometimes
when I use the word daughter
you should know I mean going or gone.
I won't tell her that the orchards we used to visit
have gone up in flames the wildfire so intense
it tore along the root system far below ground.
The orchards where the sweetness of the apples
made her small body contract with pleasure.
The orchards where I once bought my mother
a small round pot of clouded honey but never
shipped it. Instead placed it on the top shelf
in the pantry where it sits still—crystalized
over the years. Granular, opaque.
A Catalog of Petty Grievances
I used idea when
I should have used ideal.
I corrected you in front of your friends
after you said abortion
had only been around
since the 1800’s.
I asked you more than once
if you were also attracted to men.
I didn’t load the dishwasher/preferred
not to use the dishwasher/didn’t know
how to load the dishwasher right.
I lacked efficiency. The dishes
didn’t get clean. I thought dishes
should be washed by hand
On the drive in from Neskowin, I remember
our daughters’ heads so heavy they lolled
back and forth like sandbags.
You told me about your ex-wife’s
killer sense of fashion and pointed out
that I didn’t have much of an aesthetic.
What did that mean? The dark wet road
unrolled and wound through the dark wet trees.
I wondered in that moment if I’d ever had sex
with a man who didn’t despise some part of me.
Later you told me
I had an unfeminine heart.
I was withholding.
I withheld.
I gave up.
I told your daughter she would
one day be free of you.
I never cried. Rarely used a cutting board.
Dulled all your good knives.
Couldn’t come unless you were silent.
Couldn’t sleep unless the fan was on.
Allisa Cherry is the author of the poetry collection An Exodus of Sparks (Michigan State University Press) and the 2024 recipient of the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize (RCAH Center for Poetry). Her work has recently appeared in journals such as Rattle, Chicago Quarterly, New Ohio Review, and The Penn Review. Raised in an irradiated town in rural Arizona, she now lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches workshops for immigrants and refugees transitioning to life in the U.S. and serves as an associate poetry editor for West Trade Review.