Cygnus and the Burden of Staying Airborne
Kristy Beckman
The weathered gray barn spitting out nails and cradling owls' nests in its rafters
Swaying in the wind like a rickety canoe in a tempestuous lake
Creating the horizon from my perch on Mom's splintery porch
My limbs growing stiff under the looming presence of the water tower
The red embers of a distant car's tail lights disappear into a stand of oak trees up the road
Now it's just me and the corn
Proud, papery stalks collapsing under the blinding black of a new moon.

The constellations take longer to walk across the sky here
They travel to the strains of sorrowful violins-
Yes, even the crickets sing more slowly
Slower than a tumor growing to the beat of Mom's heart
Slower than a biopsy and slower than radiation burning her pale skin
Slower than the time it takes her doctor to declare
her cured
And still slower than the time it takes the cancer to reappear on a mammogram
(But not as slow
As cutting away her breasts and sewing her back
up)

I'll stand in the picture window until every last blade of grass is coated in frost
Listen to the moon drawing her breath in and out, oxygen ebbing
Around the corners of her mouth
Run my fingers over her satiny scars if she wants
And all this to smother the fear
That the stars will be too tired to come out after tonight,
Exhausted from treading against the wind for so
long.

Kristy Beckman is a Senior at Mills College in Oakland, CA working on an English/ Creative Writing and a Women’s Studies BA. She grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, where she began her endeavors as a devoted feminist activist. Kristy enjoys playing the piano, eating spaghetti, going to the movies, and above all else, seeing her poetry up on the internet.

 |  about STP  |  write for STP  |  contact us  |  links  |

text only index