I Must Hide My Memory in a Mustard Grain
by Daniel Schall
–After Louise Erdrich
Where its smallness is sphered, the fat of memory
marbled equally in all directions, miming my hands
against unseen walls. When the cat-backed SUV
plunges past my car’s open window, I nose
the sulphur notes, powder-packed silver
droplets so fine they bubble like gas in the throat.
Perhaps the driver is a gun enthusiast.
Perhaps his father also killed God's
milking creatures with his bullets. Perhaps not.
How memory, tucked in a thumbprint of dirt,
has a way of growing colossal, limbs
bursting from the glass of the earth
where sheltered are spines of every animal.
After his death, I swore I would bury myself
in a compostable pod. Let this body dissolve.
Years later, grown from my bones, the tree
will bud trembling poems. And later, still, the fruit
curving my branches low: hollow shells.
Where its smallness is sphered, the fat of memory
marbled equally in all directions, miming my hands
against unseen walls. When the cat-backed SUV
plunges past my car’s open window, I nose
the sulphur notes, powder-packed silver
droplets so fine they bubble like gas in the throat.
Perhaps the driver is a gun enthusiast.
Perhaps his father also killed God's
milking creatures with his bullets. Perhaps not.
How memory, tucked in a thumbprint of dirt,
has a way of growing colossal, limbs
bursting from the glass of the earth
where sheltered are spines of every animal.
After his death, I swore I would bury myself
in a compostable pod. Let this body dissolve.
Years later, grown from my bones, the tree
will bud trembling poems. And later, still, the fruit
curving my branches low: hollow shells.
Dan Schall is a poet based in Pennsylvania. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Willows Wept Review, Philadelphia Stories, Anthropocene Literary Journal, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Shore, Right Hand Pointing, Merion West and many other journals.