Liz Harms
Two POEMS
Deluxe Mini Play Cube in Planned Parenthood
In the waiting room, you’ll watch someone’s child
guide beads along rollercoaster metal wires
which sprout from a wooden base. Listen closely
for the muted thud of beads dropped
in a metal valley; wait for the child to slide
each bead through dizzy loops. You’re told Vertigo
is a common side-effect of misoprostol. The child spins
plastic gears on the cube’s side, mesmerized
by the zigzagged centers, not at all nauseated
at blurred reflections bouncing off tile.
A cheap daycare will also be tiled.
It might have an alphabet-ringed rug
with remnants of stains, but most surfaces will be hard.
You’ll sign a waiver from all liability
in respect of damage or loss of the child.
The clinic is unable to provide childcare,
so you’ll sit with your partner who called in
sick and is losing sixty-four dollars to be here,
he says, sixty-four dollars, and watch the child
click the disks on the plastic abacus
left and right. When the child, whose
mother is in an exam room, grows frantic
with boredom you think the clicks start to sound
like the chamber of your father’s pistol,
which he taught you to shoot in the back woods
on your tenth birthday; the same week
your jeans dampened with blood
at school. The instructional video says
After your visit, you will need a telephone,
transportation, and backup medical care at home.
On the exam bed they’ll ask you
to place your feet in the metal stirrups,
which click into place, echoing
like the breech from magazine
to chamber.
Epithalamium with Modern Horror
“AGAIN LOVE, THE LIMB-LOOSENER, RATTLES ME BITTERSWEET, IRRESISTIBLE, A CRAWLING BEAST.” —SAPPHO
I’ve done it. Married you with a dead fish in my mouth.
The ichthys was first a vulva before a backronym
made it Christ. Lately, our faith is a diaphanous cloth
dipped in a pool of water. We wrap ourselves in its gossamer
shield & stand chafing in the damp, waiting to leave & watch
Game of Thrones, which I should’ve abandoned after the first rape
or when the girl peels off people’s faces to hide herself;
when the woman’s pregnant belly is stabbed.
They show the bedding ceremony,
wedding guests strip naked the bride and groom en route
to the bedchamber. Outside the door, their animalrough directives
pierce the roof of my mouth & make me water.
When I say “I do,” I spit out the fish. It falls between our feet, a skeleton.
The audience’s cheers are muffled like the preacher’s voice
when he dunked me, Holy Water rushing in my nostrils.
It’s then I think of Midsommar. How Christian enters Maja, surrounded
by bared commune mothers who mimic each feral pant & scream.
What rancid piece of me siphons thrill from his debasement
—his pared, naked shape? You turned your head at his violation,
whisper “Christ,” how I did during The Last House on the Left
before leaving you to finish alone.
At the reception, you grip my neck with each crash of our guests’ bells,
clamp your wet mouth to mine. We flood down our throats
champagne in a limousine to the nicest two-star hotel,
where we will fuck on the missionary-white sheets. You’ll flop over
gasping & I’ll watch The Confession Killer. I’ll watch Henry Lee Lucas
lie about hundreds of murders to feel wanted;
I’ll watch his desperate eyes & wait for truth to ooze
through holes where his teeth should be. I’ll watch you sleep.
Years from now, when we’ve peeled every face from each other,
after hundreds of horror stories by talking heads,
I’ll lay myself in your lap. We’ll be so tired, & still
you’ll cover my eyes. You’ll watch for me.
Liz Harms (she/her) is a poet and managing editor of Ninth Letter. She was a finalist for the 2022 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and received an honorable mention for Nimrod International’s 2023 Pablo Neruda Prize. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere.