First Book of Spells

From this, she was half her mother,
skin as shadow and moss,
hair as sac cloth, as rumor
and sigh. She has a motion
for syllables, for the string
of roads over the lips,
summoning words of each section.
Her voice becomes the same angry tremble,
miraculous drains into her blood.
Her eyes lit as the stake’s burning wood.

She becomes an apprentice
with the thick throat of her father.
His bones so hallowed, such cold weight.
Her bright liquid hair was his,
golden as scale. Each day, it bore
the sun in a blaze of sacrifice.
He was dead before her birth, washed
clean in dry lungs, just another stiff,
ribs picked clean along the highway.
That half of her was not made
for bucket seats and tires.
That half of her found pages
just another bag of skin to make damp.
To ruin, rend down with webbed hand into pulp.

Her mother’s half was nether-bloom,
unfolding leaves as streetlights snapped on,
corner after corner appeared
from her window, tiny worlds she could populate
with the bodies of hawk moths,
wings of dust and vapor - the real angels.
Soundtrack trill of the crickets’ legs,
black sticks like the conductor’s wand,
each pulse matches her breath
as metronome. As each word
becomes her mother’s sigil,
her father’s bubbled tone, and the first cry
of her own voice’s bloody new birth.

***

C.L. Liedekev is a New Jersey expatriate living in Conshohocken, PA, with his real name, wife, and children. He is a two-time nominee for Best of the Net, with his poem "November Snow. Philadelphia Children's Hospital" being a finalist in 2021. His poem, The Hungry, was a 2023 Inaugural Plentitudes Prize finalist. His work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Humana Obscura, Red Fez, River Heron Review, Marrow, American Writers Review, In parentheses, Bindweed Magazine, Feral, Hare's Paw, Alien Buddha, Marrow Magazine, Poppy Road Review, Tiny Seed, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, amongst many others.