Triptych
1. TRIPLE EXPOSURE
We come whirling down
like lopsided angels, each of us
a riddle on the family tree.
All our Sunday faces
are strangers to a mother
who cannot remember
the hour of our singular births.
I know we must not show her
how many hearts beat under our ribs
or she will wrinkle
and burn away.
Your computer cannot integrate
our baby parts
with its thin blue lines
or its darting cursor
sewing all night
with a long string from belly to mouth.
Each of me is a basket
filled with bedsheets
& bone flakes
& inkwells.
2. A KIND OF TRINITY
She is three-in-one
A sort of trinity
Observe the three of her
That live here sometime
Sprouting like mushrooms
From a damp cave floor
Innocuous most of them
Most of the time
Fleshy umbrellas
Wild or edible or deadly
These are the two
She calls sister
Thrusting the silver rootlets
Of their lives
Into her body
She would gather them
With her fingers
Long knives
A harvest to be canned
Frozen or dried
Or squeeze them until they burst
Like puffs of smoke
The three of her
Feels everything
Pick one
Eat her with meat
While she is fresh
Before her babies come
She thinks she is real
Steps among the luscious caps
Carefully not to crush
The wild flesh of her
The edible flesh
The poisonous flesh
What are they doing for lunch
Stuff the three of her
Into your brown bag
Tell her to fuck off
Swallow her cold
3. EUTHANASIA WITH PSILOCYBIN
Listen:
Janus had but two heads
For God’s sake
And I have three—
One wood, one salt, one fire
Making demands, giving orders
Fire tells wood how to die with grace:
Stretch out under my red hands
Spit out your black widows
Grow daisies.
Salt tells fire:
Observe
I will smother you with crystal hands
Stop your red mouth
Ears, throat and belly with my white rocks.
When I come down
One of us is left.
She is not me. She will dissolve
And leak out with my tears, sweat, and menses
She will not get old
She will never see our skulls.
Joyce Ellen Davis is a native Californian transplanted to Utah, where her autobiographical first novel Chrysalis won first place in the Utah Fine Arts Competition. Her book of poems, In
Willy's House, won her the title of Utah Poet Laureatte. She studied Theater Arts at the Pasadena Playhouse and travelled around the USA and Canada with a Theater Road Company, and studied creative writing at the University of Southern California and the University of Utah. She has since written another novel and several more books of poetry. She is the mother of five sons, and grandmother of eight.