Warning
My mother’s womb
was a kiln
and it burned me.
I was born
smelling of smoke;
skin charred
instead of smooth,
and fat and pink.
Doctors gathered
from all wings
of the hospital,
wondered about
chemical composition,
about something
not quite right,
a reason for this,
and what, if anything,
it would mean.
T i m e L a p s e
My father’s hair changed
from pitch black to white
in the time I grew
from girl to woman: gradually
and yet, one night at dinner
the man behind the swirling
wine glass looked suddenly old
and unlike the father
with lustrous black hair
and bright blue eyes
to whom I bore
such a striking resemblance.
I too gave in
to time, to the gale
of hormones that grew me
into woman. The first time
my father mistook my footsteps
for my mother’s, I cried—
my heft had become
audible, reproductive—
my spritely step replaced
by a fertile stride.
I miss my quiet body,
my father’s jet black hair.
We sit stiff in our bodies now,
neither of us comfortable
with the other’s semblance,
unsure of how we fit
together—woman, father,
child, daughter, man.
All the years grown
between us—gnarled roots
of our divergences,
pushed through, exposed.
Delicate Cycle
You should write a poem about this—
she says, fingering the lace hem
of some underwear.
I am home for the weekend
and my mother insists
on doing my laundry.
Clean stacks of folded t-shirts
on the sofa, high-rises
of sweaters and jeans:
my mother surveys
this skyline she’s created—
You know how I know
you don’t live here?
I don’t recognize any of these.
Dahlia Seroussi is a bilingual poet who hails from the San Francisco Bay Area. She earned her MFA from Oregon State University. Dahlia's poems have appeared in Kentucky Review, Monterey Poetry Review, Eleven Eleven Journal, and Chinquapin. Her chapbook, What I Know, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013. Dahlia fits in a standard carry-on.