Cannibal

Once, I stared so hard at a girl I made her wet her pants.
Up until then I considered myself nice, one way
of survival, an invisible animal. I grafted myself

to the trees after that, during the two weeks
of Girl Scout Camp, though the others felt the same,
patting my back like I’d won a prize of having

to put up with something intolerable. Before,
I’d chosen her as my nest mate and we had two days
canoeing across the lake and in the mess hall

side by side, unburdening family stories. But I’d as soon
murder her the way she ran to the shore that day
to escape my eyes. I didn’t follow. Now, I can admit

I felt satiated by my own stare like a cannibal forced
to wait too long for its next meal. There was no greyness in me.
After thirteen years of sameness, blending in.

All it took, her short straight hair an indescribable hue,
soft eyes, pinkish skin, but mostly her sweatshirt
frayed at her thick neck. No. It wasn’t her.

Back home, no room for this new avocation. My brother
had applied for the job in the womb and once
bursting forth he did double duty. I looked at him

sideways. He hit me. He got into trouble.
But it wasn’t the same as the girl at camp
and the hunger she made me feel.

The Accidental Gardener

Faces of oversized flowers and thorns
of cactus, all that lived in the Burbank garden.
We’d wind through pebbled paths
then end up in the boggy section
with leafmeal of the fallen
and at the end, the closed Japanese gate.
My mother didn’t garden, admitting
worms to our property who chowed
down on petunia leaves and slept
with fuchsias. The only grafting
unintentional, red and yellow roses
a happy mix where one cat stretched
on the grass below. We had no stones
like the famous garden, engaged
no outside advice or a golden
hand to sculpt, left to square shapes.
I’ll admit that I inherited
my mother’s weaknesses.
In most things she excelled, but the cruel
piecemeal work on the bushes–
I learned it all as I trimmed
the vines as simply as possible.

Dear Beethoven

The man in the next row looks at his wife
after every outburst of the quartet and says “hmm”.
Tell me, what can I do? It’s enough for me
after a few days of anger. But the waltz—
can I praise the violin, higher in pitch, flowerets
strewn and heroic deeds. Tell me, how did you nestle
a woman’s voice in the middle of the darkest movements?
I’ve heard you hummed it over the music room.
You must have known, in the midst of the cello
deep diving. After all, light divided is still light,
both violins upward, viola holding the lines together.
Then the sotto voce, dark promise at the center
where the mind wanders without eyes, silhouetted
against stars. Tell me, your notes, half-life
of their former selves—do they signal the end
of your own life? When you walked out and through
the cypress garden with its airy pockets, opened
when the light pulled in.

Effect of Rain

Before I spear-dived into lakes, chased drops of rain
into rivers, cupped my hands where fish swarmed around me,

uncatchable, my father used a pole then pulled trout
off the hook. But he is gone, didn’t have to watch planes crash

into towers or a president’s treason, and for some reason
these are what I time-test rather than mom’s stroke

during Obama’s presidency, or somehow, my brother’s survival.
And years since, I’ve held my hands out when it rains,

listening to garments sewn of clouds, followed drops
catching birch leaves. I’ve swum in lanes wearing spandex

with green curlicues. I sewed a skirt and cape from mesh,
attached sequins, a dryad’s wardrobe where the air breathed in.

And still I ask, what could have stopped my father seizing up
on the car ride from LA. After, my mother talked to strangers

in the way she never did. I’ve swept away algae that masks
the depths, but it’s not the same. If I could, like my father,

returned a rain jacket to REI after two years or when he found
the one thing missing in the garage. How he rested

an eye on his patients, counseling them towards reconciliation,
sanity. Yet, he taught me before I was born which way

north lies and where cuts in a map reveal
a stream or a lake.

Self Portrait as Hieronymus Bosch’s Last Judgement

Back-carry me in a teacup with other male
nudes, fly swat me with your blue hoodie
and red pants, wash the floor with skirts
hitched up, because I’ve got nothing to lose.
You knew we’d never listen to global warming,
pandemic, war-tinged diatribes. Christian bible me
into hell, no Dante-esque middle path desired. Fit
my head with a bird cage, put a barrel over my middle
so I can roll metal-mouthed. Wrestle me with a wood-handled
knife to cut off limbs or leave me standing idle
while a soldier thrusts a sword through my bare
back. And for once, please give me some answers.
Why didn’t the woman in green smile back?
Sure, I hate crowds but mood is changeable. I never
considered this rocking chair of a painter
would engulf me with his unclouded and unblurred
lines—nothing but crisp fine boundaries of objects
touched with enough light to eye pop against
the black base. I taste the garlic Bosch ate
with his dinner, washed with tannic wine, hear
his wife’s ring-bell words as the studio door closed.
My last request—banish me from this canvas and
I promise not to copy the red clog with a sailcloth,
promise not to perfect my thieving ways
because believe me, we’ve got to look forward.

Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work forthcoming or published in Lily Poetry Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Sky Island Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, among others. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and Ekphrastic Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College. She is a reader for Common Ground Review and has featured in the Lily Poetry Review Salon. She was nominated for Best of the Net by Flapper Press in 2022.