I-70 Review

Writing and Art from the Middle and Beyond

Lisa Fay Coutley

Lisa Fay Coutley is the author of tether (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), Errata (Southern Illinois University, 2015), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition, In the Carnival of Breathing (BLP, 2011), winner of the Black River Chapbook Competition, and Small Girl: Micromemoirs (Harbor Editions, 2024). She is also the editor of the grief anthology, In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (BLP, 2024). She is an NEA Fellow, Associate Professor of Poetry and Creative Non-Fiction in the Writer's Workshop at the University of Nebraska Omaha, and Chapbook Series Editor at Black Lawrence Press.

To the Friend Who Sent Me Goodwill Forks As a Gift

I'm not embarrassed to live alone

with my three mismatched forks.

I'm not sorry you had to wash one

to eat the omelet, I fried for you.

I want you to wait until your son

is asleep, then quiet into his room

to his bed's edge & try to see him

without that cosmic nightlight

inside him, in a now that does not

involve you. As they do, my sons

outgrew me & the home-cooked

meals I might throw in their faces

for the way a single mother grinds

her teeth to pieces in broken sleep.

I'm breath locked behind wiredrawn

ribs. The dark welt of alone. Blemish

even to women like you who believe

they know what going it alone means.

Co-parenting. I keep waiting for

this dark fist in my chest to pearl.

I could be baptized a second time

just to let someone hold my weight.

God, how we ruin you with words,

though we like the rhyme of saying

meth den or meth head in theory

even if I'm cursed to see a hive

of bodies pulsating around the same

hanging dime. You cannot possibly

dream there'll be a time when you will

be asked to wrap your spare silverware

& mail it to your son in his new city,

his new place, his new him, the sweet

smell of yellow smoke the only warm

blanket around his shaking frame.

from Host, section*

(appeared in Waxwing)

My Lake

My lake has many rooms and one, which is red

with a door that's always open but chained.  

My lake owns boxing gloves. She owns lingerie.

She can swing, she can cha-cha, she can salsa

and tap but refuses a simple slow dance. My lake

learned early to rest the needle without a scratch.    

She has been classically trained in lovemaking.  

When she wants to ride a rollercoaster, she does

it alone. When she lets her hair down, men go

blind. My lake doesn't take any shit. She wears

stilettos in ice storms, does crosswords in pen.

She eats red meat. Her porch needs painting,

her flowers need weeding, but my lake reads

palms in twelve different languages. If my lake

puts her hand to your chest, she decides. At times,

whole days can pass when she won't let anyone

near her. She freezes just before she murders

her own shore. It's been years, and still my lake

won't name the delicate sound of ice taking

then brushing away. She might say it's the train

of a wedding dress, or the rain falling on a glass

slipper. There are times she sees the grace of two

loons gliding—their bodies a duet over breaking

water, and she slows herself. She makes a cradle.

from Errata

(appeared in Cave Wall)

Shooting Geese,

          I'll maintain, is a thing I did for love.

               At fifteen, a girl will crouch in the blind

                    until her toes go numb, eager

          to prove her aim. It's hard to know how far she'll go

               over slick rocks at the shore's edge,

                    lugging her bodyweight in decoys,

          for a boy. A boy who'll later trace with his finger

               the white smudge growing inside her, nothing

                    more than a sonogram, & ask if it is

          too late.  Changing my mind at the right time

               has never been my strength. I'd wait.

                    I'd hold my breath with the water

          as my witness, my finger loose against the trigger,

               taking direction not from that north wind

                    or whitecaps or silhouettes circling

          plastic geese, so when that boy mouthed now

               through clenched teeth it never occurred to me

                    that I might have been their first

          warning, might have pointed toward the sun

               rising & fired both rounds, as if to say no,

                    I won't bait them, won't

          watch them glide toward those empty shells

               so much like themselves, but I let them fall

                    one by one to the dark of that water.  

          By their necks, like bouquets, I held them up  

               as proof, then lay them in a row on shore.  

                    There, on my knees, I gripped them

          each in turn & spun their bodies counterclockwise

               against the stillness of their heads,

                    just in case, just to be sure.  

from Errata

(appeared in American Literary Review)

Errata

As the story goes, the raven's wings

aren't black. They're waves capping

dark omens. Crows with curtained throats.

Who knows what falls from the shelf

inside us. Even gods skin their knees

to bleed. The man at the end of the aisle

is pocketing two-for-one toothbrushes.  

The cashier is hand-perking her breasts  

& picking her teeth with a receipt.

I'm sorry you won't see your son, his skin

peeling its white scarf through blizzards.

I haven't sanded the road, won't

strut across town in my ballet slippers.

Your shape in this bed is my shape.

Erase my whole notes from your page.

Two stoplights ago, the wind

off a pickup pulled us further from home.

When I said the moonlight made graves

to square off the night, I meant to say

pull over. Listen: my heart's a gutter

of ravens tugging at the firmament.

from Errata

(first appeared in Linebreak)

On Home

All winter long my sons have pointed guns

in my face and with their mouths popped

the triggers. The oldest wants to spoon me.       

The youngest wants to change his name

to the playground pimp. When we circle up

for dinner, I'm careful not to say chicken breast

or meatball or anything they can follow with

that's what she said. Consider the going rate

for hormones, then picture an eager group

of eBay bidders. I joke, but someone should

tell these boys—in a wake of black mascara,

mothers drive away. All winter long I've left

feel-good Post-its on the bathroom mirror,  

the espresso maker, the edge of my razor.  

          Every day, I've given myself reasons to stay.

            from Errata

            (appeared in The Hollins Critic)

Driving Drunk, & a Dozen White Crosses

from her purse to her palm, she revs her cemetery  

     toward a gauzy daymoon, curves our Buick

the hipbend home. Mouthfuls of ditch flowers

     purple & passing, cottonwoods spilling

that moon's confetti, the coal in Mother's eyes

     whitening. This is the fire I warm my hands by.  

Clear the deadwood & you'll see: nothing but a girl

     with a mouth dry of music. Let's pretend

this is thirst, when a girl might stagger three, maybe four

     days before paving her own mirage: a single drop

of oil down a harp string. Rain. Under this influence,

     it will take years to learn she's a room she drags

with her. Wall-to-wall nettles she's shaped into banjos,

     maracas, a flute. When it finally comes time to sit

to the river, she'll have to finger her throat, snap in halves

     all the notes that woman sung into her—

granite specks from hammer to chisel to headstone—

     until the horse in her heart stamps its hooves again.

from Errata

(first appeared in Clackamas Literary Review)

Anxiety

according to my therapist, is my body's / way of saying I'm a gazelle, head bent / to long grass, eating but heeding the puma / who's tracking me, so I often stop, raise my / face & wait, unable to chew until my brain / scans the landscape to see I'm free / from teeth. In the tall window of this / office, Lucinda the magenta orchid screams / or flames or celebrates even though it is / January & there is no sky. There's an elephant / straight ahead, Buddha to the left, a trampoline behind me / where once I rocked myself still for the dull pain / in my pelvis. There are two silent clocks / & no foul smells, no reason to fear this room / wants to hold me by my wrists / still light pours in from the north / when a man's hand erases a girl's thigh / until she's the fish with a fluke for its will / forcing her to flash her shimmering fins / bald at the water's top for some lucky bird / come pluck her my parasite inside / I'll be the bird flying a half life / singing against my own desire.

II.

Or I am not a gazelle. I am pinned

to the bed in a way only one of us likes.

I am breath locked behind the wire

drawn ribs of knowing you're running

out of this week's money to feed

your babies. I am learning to cry

quietly so as not to hurt everyone

around me. Each year I grow more

sunflowers for the faces I'm holding

underwater inside me. A bird of prey

in the house is one less in the sky.

from HOST, section *

(appeared in Gulf Coast, winner of the

2021 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize)