Twila Newey

Excerpt from Sylvia

And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 

Eve

Her hands were in the soil, her fingers digging around the roots of small weeds.  She’d woken early from the dream, the warmth of the small fingers fading from her hand and walked out into the back yard.  The smell of citrus hung in the air and she thought of early fall mornings in her mother’s garden.  Her mom’s hair held back by a blue bandanna , turning, smiling, standing barefoot in the cool wet grass. The image hung in the dawn light, between sight and memory, as her mind struggled through the thick heat of the Indian summer morning.  The air felt wrong.  By late September, mornings should have already begun to turn cool, the air thin and crisp, an intake of breath sufficient to clear out the mists of sleep.  Instead it was still heavy with summer fever.  The hinges squeaked as the screen door opened.  She brushed her dark hair out of her eye with the back of her hand and turned to see who was stepping out with the sunrise.  

Just Mo, she thought, talking to someone on the phone.  

His form was shadow, the rising sun a flash behind him in her eyes.  The low murmur of his voice mixed with the buzz of bees at their everyday work.  Her eyes followed the small dark dots of their bodies as they visited one plant and then the next.  She watched attentively as they burrowed into the tiny flowers. 

He touched her on the shoulder.  She turned her head back toward him, shading her eyes.  He was still a shadow, the sun spilling around his edges.   

“It’s Roxcy. Evie, your mom—”

She reached out and took the phone from him without listening, waving him off.  He didn’t move.

“Morning, Rox.”  

She heard an intake of breath, a shudder.

“Mom was in a car accident, Evie, this morning driving home from California—”

The roar of her own blood pumping in her ears.  She looked up at Mo again, the wisteria behind him, fading along the cedar trellis.  He was crying, his hand rubbing his forehead.  She heard the sound of a car start and pull out of a driveway, a siren somewhere far off.  The glasses from last night’s dinner sat on the table beneath the green shade umbrella.  When he moved to sit beside her, she saw all the grief the sunrise had blocked.  She tried to listen to her sister, locate her sister’s reliable cheerfulness, but it had vanished. She spit words in Eve’s ear.

“The memorial is this coming week. Friday.”  

“Friday?”

“Yes, I booked you a flight. I sent an email with the link.  You can print out your ticket.”  

“An email,” Eve repeated.

“I sent it this morning, early.  We all left messages on your phone.  I hadn’t heard back from you.  We’ll stay at the cabin together, that way we can go through everything.  Evie, she asked to be cremated.  She wants us to scatter her ashes somewhere near Timp.  o funeral.  Mary’s already been through her will.  We’ve been up since  early three in the morning. She already identified mom’s body.”  Silence  “Eve, are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“We have to at least have a memorial service, right?  What about all mom’s old friends from the Fourth Ward.  She lived there for so long.  We all did.  Eve?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t keep her ashes on my mantel.”  Roxcy let go an incomprehensible torrent of words, something about the Church Handbook, because of the resurrection. She wasn’t clear on the particulars. Of course, she’d never actually read the Church handbook.  George would know.  She’d ask George, but she was fairly certain cremation was discouraged.  She didn’t know anyone who’d been cremated.  

“I don’t understand,” Eve said quietly.  She felt Mo’s arm around her.  

“I don’t either.  Why would she ask us to do that?   I have to go, mom’s bishop is calling. We’re all coming to pick you up at the airport.  You land at eleven-thirty tonight.  I’m sorry.  I know it’s late.  It was the best I could do for a same-day flight.  She heard her sister’s voice catch.  

“What’ll we do without her?”

“I don’t know.”  

“I have to go. I’m glad you’re coming tonight.  I love you.” 

“Love you too.”

The sun felt hot on the back of Eve’s neck.  Her dark hair pulled back from her olive face.  Her gray eyes blurred.  Mo lifted the phone from her hand.  She thought she should try and stand, do something, but she couldn’t move.  She curled herself inward wrapped her arms around her legs, bent her neck down until her forehead rested on her knees. Folded.  Mo moved behind her.  His arms wrapped around her, the solidness of his body holding her together.  More than a year now of him having to hold her together.   She knew Mo and her mom had been watching her now for signs of another fissure, trying to mend any hint of a crack.  Eve could smell citrus, see her mother’s image hovering in the garden.  She wanted to tell Mo this was the work of the spirit, this small familiar comfort in the unfamiliar heat. But he didn’t believe in anything but her, so she kept it to herself. 

“I’m sorry, Eve, so sorry,” his breath in her ear.

“This past year, Mo—”

He held her closer.  

“Do you want me to come with you?”  

“No...No, finish the conference.” She shook her head back and forth then rested against his arm.  “Fly out in a few days, for the service.  We’ll need time alone.  Just the four of us.” 

He sat with her for the next hour as grief came in sets, like waves that tossed her, the strong current threatening to pull her back out to sea.  Her long arms held her knees to close to her chest, curled in.  His arm around her shaking shoulders.  He walked her inside when the temperature hit 90 on the thermostat, telling her she should lay down, try and rest.  He pulled down a shade.

“You’ll be Ok here alone?” 

“Yes, I’m ok, really.  Go work on your lecture.  I’ll try and rest.  I should try to rest.”

She opened the door to the small bathroom and flipped the switch.  Bright white tile glared in the canned light.  Eve caught her reflection, her gray eyes the same color as her mother’s.  Her thick, dark eyebrows pulled together.  She thought of the stains she’d left in the grout in the downstairs bathroom as she gathered her soap, her moisturizer, mascara, and toothbrush placing them into a plastic baggie.  The reassurance of touching everyday things. She packed as though she was going to Utah for a visit.  Her warm coat hung in their hall closet, along with her winter sweaters and boots, all the things she would need for September nights up Provo Canyon.  September marked the beginning of unpredictable weather in the Wasatch Mountains, where the evidence of her mom’s life waited in the small cabin.  It filled the little, manageable, rooms where Eve had been allowed to hide quietly, more than a year ago, for the whole spring.  Where she had been allowed time and space to recover.  Where she’d wake, remember, begin to cry and feel her mom’s familiar arms gather her in, hold and rock her, as if she were still small.  

How much loss can one body carry without breaking?  She thought, and folded a skirt and shirt she’d laid out for the evening, a dinner she and Mo were supposed to attend with the dean. She put it in her suitcase, zipping the edges closed. Tired, she climbed into the unmade bed.  Her phone lay on the nightstand.  It was her habit to turn it off each night before bed.  She reached for it and pressed the on switch.  Her sister’s names appeared in her voicemail.  She put the phone back down.  Mo was right.  She needed to close her eyes for just a minute, just for a minute.  As soon as she closed her eyes to rest she felt like a child waiting for her mother to tell her a story—her name story.

theories of heaven

THEORIES OF HEAVEN

i.

and what if
            the kingdom of heaven
                      is a teacupful
                                 of plants flown
                                             on a duck’s feet
                                                         from one fresh
                                                                   water haunt to another
                                                                                           and just hatched
                                                                                                                    shells who cling &
                                                                                                                    crawl across sky
                                                                                           as wide as six or
                                                                     seven hundred miles
                                                          feet & beaks & wading
                                                 birds a heron
                                    blown like light
                        across some vast
sea across some
                       island by glide
                                  & current toward
                       her little pond
                                 where viscud mud
can loose life
           everywhere an
                      eternity of
                                 earth touching
                                             water

  
ii.

and what if

the kingdom

of heaven

is not

a kingdom

but a web

of complex

relations insects

caught in

the mouth of

a bear becoming

monstrous as a

whale swimming

across more

and more

aquatic time

suspended I

can imagine

a gazillion

such possibilities

iii.

And what if heaven is only grass?
Close your eyes & see green

flushed red with poppy—Kingdom: Plantae,
Family: Rannunculales, Tribe: Anemone—

Jesus’ lilies, open invitation, patient
waiting, for bees who’ve nuzzled

flower bodies over centuries seeking short-cuts
to nectar, a long time of strange & happy

accidents, small deviations in size & shape—
a slight change in curvature & length of the proboscis—

flower bodies oblige bees,
in turn, return to spread pollen

over patient years,
over unhurried fields,

over centuries, until they are a flood
of bloom, a full flowered progeny.

Published in Green Mountains Review

Liquid Cartography

LIQUID CARTOGRAPHY

I have known my body as a plexus of river maybe

forever vessel & blue-green vein, a topographical map flowing

just beneath my skin, raised & pooled

at the pale inner bend of elbow.

Recently they’ve discovered another liquid system,

the color & substance of flow evaporated mystery.

Unmapped channels have always run through me

then—an elusive network that disappears into line

of sinew when the body dries, a desert society

of empty seasonal streams.

What is the substance of impermanence?

A trick like light, both wave & particle?

When I was as small as the child who floats by

my window, his hands swimming through air carried high

on the shoulders of an old man, I learned

the heft of my body is seventy percent water.

A fact that still slips through

me like rain.

Published in Radar Poetry

Collection of Springs

COLLECTION OF SPRINGS

Light and shadow play
beneath the maple tree in her yard
the way some people know joy and sorrow
share space inside a body. I remember
hanging upside down, by my knees, in those branches
with her boy when we were both knee-scraped,
still new to the world, in love with worms,
rocks, swirl of snail shell, everything held
like a treasure, examined, passed around, in curious delight.
His body is gone now.
It was a long letting go.
Years and years, she tells me
how she held him, a hollowed-out shell of bone,
in the back garden. I can hear the light of early evening
in her words, years of early evenings,
every year dropped and picked up again, when spring is knee-scraped,
new to the world. Her eyes hold wound
like something too heavy to bury
in any single phrase.
And, suddenly, it’s years ago sitting together
in the front of a car built to carry
seven children, no seat belts, the steering wheel a large circle,
her brown hair always pulled back
her skin always golden brown.
She told me (She tells me) her childhood in movements,
in separations, parents coming and going,
reassures me they came back for her eventually.
Details unchanged by time,
her past someplace north and cold,
the sun warm through the windshield and
I remember I knew she was safe,
wanted to comfort and belong to her
because she knew things I couldn’t name
but knew also, and wasn’t afraid.
That was years ago when I
was still carefully curled
in the four chambers of my childhood
heart, safe from breaking.
So many, years of loss and blessing now
and I must be close to the age she was then.
It’s early spring again and she takes my hand,
leads me to the back room, large windowed, looking out
on the garden she shows me
her collection of rocks, variegated green
from the Italian coast, and shells, abandoned houses
of pink bellied conch, smooth bone, from a beach
on an island somewhere east of here, shrine after shrine
to temporary, gathered beauty. She cups one pebble in her hand,
runs her thumb over the smooth surface,
wondering at the mystery of a single line,
and passes me the treasure of its small weight in my palm.

Published in JuxtaProse Magazine

recollections

RECOLLECTIONS

when i begin to sketch her rough edges
there will be a small round hole

the size of a pen pushed through paper
where her heart beat.

one of her eyes, the right one,
will be gone or closed.

her hair will be long, like in the picture
she didn’t know someone took.

her hands relaxed, so you can see
the wide U of her nail beds

the back of one hand blown up
large to show plentiful veins.

this story is intergenerational
so i should include a line

from one of her mother’s letters,
documented warning of her death

and him. he has to be somewhere.
a red thread of unwound nightmare.

perhaps in or near the hole of her heart
or the x-ray of her first broken rib

laid over her pregnant belly like fog.
i’ll find a scrap of fine cotton, because it breathes.

and a picture of seven white walled rooms.
i don’t think of her outside and i need

to find the constellation of teeth she hid
in the bathroom cupboard at night.

and the packet of powdered starlight
she turned to dust on.

the whole page will smell of orange peel.

Published in Summerset Review