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Captive

Nicole Santalucia

 

for Lesley, Patty, Kathy, and Eileen

 

I woke up in a zoo feeding penguins
that looked like grandmothers I would’ve
knocked down to get a cigarette,
but I quit smoking two years ago
when I came face to face with
a skunk in my backyard. Monday
is garbage night—this I know.
There was a time when I didn’t
know I had a drug problem then
there was a time when I did. The knowing
trapped and released me. We fenced
in the backyard last spring to keep out
little critters, and now I have land sickness.
Anne gave us Jack-in-the-pulpits that have been
in the family for generations. I never thought
this scarlet, orange fruit would blossom again and
again and again—that I’d take responsibility without
taking blame. Taking has nothing to do with Mondays
and Tuesdays. I take the weekend to grow tomatoes.
I always take more and the devil’s ear listens
to my spiritual disease. So does Mr. and Mrs. Brown,
and Mrs. Jones down the street wants to put the house
in her name. If the loan doesn’t go through, she might
get drunk and I might get struck by lightning.
I thought it was just me, but it’s also the landscape.
Here at the river of denial, I refuse the weather,
and people who drank like me have been hiding
in the bushes this whole time. The people who
drank like Kathy just sent her a nice check from
a bar she invested in years ago. And my inner
Eileen says we won’t get struck drunk. She hated
zoos and every penguin in town knew it. She
also had pulmonary emphysema and was rescued
by inhaling and exhaling. She taught us not to think
about thinking and how to die without dying.
We are at war with the skunks. This inner protest
and hot head of cauliflower are part of the ritual.
I place my palm on the source of heat and prepare
to listen with my whole body. I begin with tubers
and work my way to the leafy greens then open
myself up to the rage and wild onions climbing
over the fence to choke out the tree-of-heaven.

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Nicole Santalucia

Nicole Santalucia is the author of The Book of Dirt (NYQ Books), Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press), and Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Colorado Review, Palette Poetry, The Best American Poetry, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Sonora Review, Fourteen Hills, The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, The Normal School, Out Magazine and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Charlotte Mew Chapbook Prize, the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize, and the Arkana Literary Review Editor’s Choice Award. She is an Associate Professor, the Director of First-Year Writing, co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Advisory Council, and she serves on the steering committee of the Institute for Social Inclusion at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. She has led poetry workshops in the Cumberland County Prison, Shippensburg and Harrisburg Public Libraries, the Boys & Girls Club, nursing homes, and she’s the founder of The Binghamton Poetry Project.