Thrush Poetry Journal
  • ABOUT
  • ARCHIVES
  • MARCH 2023
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • AWARDS
  • MASTHEAD

Rachel Nelson
​

Tar Baby To-Do List
 
I was made to mimic
marshland, wetland, quicksand.
To not escape. To ape

bear trap and loose jaw. To love
an acre of land more
than a country. Soft apprentice

to whips. I was made to idle intently.
What a way to build
a sense of self.
 
To sit with a loaded plate
and guard it
from my own mouth.
 
In stillness. In goo
in which light stutters
and stops. I quiet
 
but sit with gossip.
Telltale. I scare-
crow in indigo. I snare. Know
 
North from South.
I inkwell. Tattoo. Go
nowhere. Indelible, of course.
 
In stillness, I enjoy what passes
for silence: the sound of stars,
their animal voices in the night.





Tar Baby in Love 
 
Tell me how you fell in love.
I have no clothes
that were not given to me.
 
My hat came from the man who gave me legs
but made sure they could not move.
I stand sentry in a field,
 
a kind of combat. What is love
to a guard dog in his circle
of dirt, to a ghoul rustling
 
in the darkness of distant trees?
My footprint covets the footprints
of light rabbit feet, the flowing grip
 
of purple-headed morning glories.
I was sat in the mud
by the river banks’ broad shoulders.
 
I was sat by the rising tide
of rice patties in a hood.
What is love to a shadow’s best wish
 
for a body? After the tar brush,
it is easy to imagine the fangs.
I can pretend to walk
 
as easily I can pretend to fly.
I pretend that we hold hands.
Tell me how
 
you meet your love? Anyone
you love? There’s always a moment
that cannot be explained.




Rachel Nelson is a Cave Canem fellow and a graduate of the University of Michigan’s MFA program, where she won a Hopwood prize for playwriting. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the museum of americana, Muzzle Magazine, pinwheel, Pleiades, Radar Poetry, and elsewhere. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.



​
Return to May 2022 Edition