Ask Only Certain Daughters
CYMELLE LEAH EDWARDS
34°18'48.3"N 110°52'32.4"W
Yours is a father whose children live
in other countries, he sends them
short stories where horses die
on every page, lowers them
facing east for the
second coming.
You know about undertows in lakes
that don’t exist from stories
grandma told and
forgets and
reforgets.
You predict what the next monster will
be, you keep avoiding the
story of that thing
between your
legs.
You think of how it won’t
learn to carry itself,
uneven luster
trickles
toward your thighs and it looks
at you ragged and mouths
carry, and you can’t
resist that fruitless
whisper,
that final utterance slips
beneath your
carry.
.jpg)
CYMELLE LEAH EDWARDS (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer from Casa Grande, AZ and the author of Coordinates [chapbook]. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University. Her work has been published in Hayden's Ferry Review, Sonora Review, and selected for translation by The Thousand Languages Project. She currently teaches at Butler University and works in media production in Indianapolis.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
"All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory--what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared." —Toni Morrison