Green Linden Press

The Lady Bug Dish

After Sylvia Plath’s Bee Poems

I don’t know where they came from,
seeped in through windows or doors,
     perhaps panes or vents,
     or at the hinges.

All I know is they are here
with me, climbing the linen
     curtains, and racing
     along the molding—

They lean towards going crazy
in flight, like a moth at flame
    I fear a nose dive
    after their circling

Once one landed on my arm
chair, so I studied its back
     some before rounding
     my own back like hers.

Was it still too cold outside
for me to flick her away
     like I did? Trauma
     of drinking nothing

except drops from the mason
jar atop the stone coaster
     on my writing desk:
     soon I will see them

congregated in the dish
nearest the window, sunlit
     exoskeletons
     wings opened for flight. 

After Emily Dickinson’s “Letter to the World”

This is my letter to the earth
Who never wrote me back—
Perhaps except to say: Mirth,
I meant to give you back

once more & give you more than birth.
You left me hollow inside, here:
a cave mined of worth—
more than a sincere

gesture or gemstone glimmering
from the darkness above— I meant        
to be shimmering
during your ascent—

Groundwater

It was the Christmas my sister’s hamsters went missing from their cage. Santa had just brought Kisses and Fatso only two nights prior. The cage was knocked over, but we didn’t put two and two together until her cat Mushy came out of hiding a few hours later. I mean, we weren’t for sure, but we suspected. And my sister just cried. Though we were young, we were no strangers to death. It didn’t help that we were so close to it all the time. Just over the small wall to the east of our house sat a funeral home: Chapel of Memories. The deluge of trucks and cars coming and going from next door and even in front of our house became so common place we hardly noticed it anymore. Someone—we learned—was always grieving. I once snuck past the funeral doors during someone’s family gathering for their dearly departed. I wanted to walk the room with empty coffins. I knew exactly where to go because I had been there a few weeks prior, at my dad’s side, picking out the coffin for my uncle. I was a planner, and I wanted to pick out my own. I sauntered past the high-end ones, not because they were too expensive, but because they simply weren’t me. And they were outdated. At one point, I remember hearing several women howling in the next room over. I knew their grief. Waves stirred and swelled within me. Part of me wanted to join them, but— there it was: a human-sized cedar box with a lacquer so clear it could’ve been hard candy. The coffin had Native designs burned into its sides, but the workmanship on it was just ok. I ran my fingers along the burnt edges, the tips picking up ash— though that coffin most appealed to me because it was lined with Pendleton wool fabric, I decided against it because it was too flashy. So, I went with the plainest of plain wooden boxes. In that one, I knew I’d be lying closest to the earth and all her water.

Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné (Navajo), is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta'neeszahnii (Tangle People). Atsitty is a recipient of numerous prizes and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, EPOCH, Kenyon Review Online, Prairie Schooner, Leavings, and other publications. Her first book is Rain Scald (University of New Mexico Press, 2018). She is the director of the Navajo Film Festival, a member of Advisory Council for BYU’s Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, a board member for Lightscatter Press of SLC, and founding member of the Intermountain All-Women Hoop Dance Competition Board of Directors at This is the Place Heritage Park. She is a PhD student in Creative Writing at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where she lives with her husband.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2022