2024 HFR Contest poetry runner-up selected by Diana Khoi Nguyen
Confessional
after Donika Kelly
Once, I made my sister so angry
she cracked my nail with my watch.
It hurt like a bitch, but my scream
was mouse-quiet. She wanted to know that she
could hurt me, so she did. I wanted my father
to stay downstairs, so I did nothing. I don't remember
what I told her. Sorry she said. I didn't
mean to hit you so hard. She was being honest.
Once, a boy was throwing pebbles at her back
so she smacked him so hard his nose bled. Once,
a classmate and I vyed for a soccer ball and,
by accident or instinct, I kicked her ankle so hard
it sprained and had to watch her manage crutches
for three weeks without ratting me out. Once, my mother
was so fed up she threw a chair at my aunt,
would have tossed the whole apartment at her head
if it had meant she could have some peace. None of us
had meant it. My sister just wanted the boy
to quit. I just wanted the ball to stay.
I ask my mother why she did it,
and she doesn't know. My mother,
a levee buckling. My mother, orphic
reflection. My mother, waiting
alone for hours at the school
bus stop for my sisters that
never returned. She turned
and they were gone. Her spirit
a broken lyre, a hush falling
down a cave. Her daughters,
swept by a god or the state
or whatever hand took pleasure
in smothering her hope.
They came for me and a friend
told me you should never lie to a cop.
I told him he's never had a reason.
They came for me and asked me her name.
I don't know I answered. They fed me
and spoke softly. They asked me her name.
I said I don't know. Denied her like
Peter. They said she stole me and I
didn’t know how to respond. My mother,
her wings of wax. Her cloudless sky.
I didn’t know a parent could steal you,
but according to California statutes,
technically, they can, and my mother,
technically, she did, stole all the way up
to the 580 underpass, stole so far north
I couldn’t tell you I had been stolen.
She came looking and they asked
her name. She said Fuck you. She said
Medusa. She said A man came sea-shimmering
and I had nowhere to run. A woman
called me dirty and I listened.
My reward: a hissing I can't escape.
A name traded for ruin. Did you know
Medusa means “guardian?” All I've ever
wanted she said is a garden to tend.
Your little book calls me the villain
she said. What else is there
to believe? They ask if she stole me
and I say I don’t know. I don’t know.
What could I have known?
I fell asleep safe. I woke up safe.
All night, just highway lights,
the nervous humming of my mother’s
Cadillac, its muted gold frame creeping
the length of the California grapevine,
past the cows and their shit and her shit
until the lamps went dark. Until the gas
went out. Until the dawn caught up.
—————
DeeSoul Carson (He/They) is a poet and educator from San Diego, CA, currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. His work is featured or forthcoming in Voicemail Poems, Muzzle Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Offing, & elsewhere. A Stanford University alum, DeeSoul has received fellowships from The Watering Hole and New York University, where he received his MFA. Find more of his work at deesoulpoetry.com.