Girls of Lake
At a Glance
Section titled āAt a Glanceā| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2019-01-01 |
| Journal | Pleiades |
| Authors | Natalie Solmer |
Abstract
Section titled āAbstractāGirls of Lake Natalie Solmer (bio) For Diane Seuss It seemed there were always tornadoes blowing through youevery day of my childhood when the storm warnings rolled over the thick, gray glass of our television and if the sirens didnāt singfrom behind the curtains my mother made, if there wasnāt death and wind in our own square of lawn beyond that cloth, then it seemedthey were always calling in Cass, your county over from mine, reporting a funnel in Dowagiac or Edwardsburg. When I was a girl and didnāt know youwhen I had the legs of a colt and you were done being an orchid on the streets of New York City, when you had returned in the time of your white dressand your good legs to the basin of the lakes, of your birth, a thousand milkweed pods opened their cotton and drifted. We knew the same water meadowssame cattails and loosestrifes. I dug them up and collected the clumped clay into plastic pots for my own pond. We both grew on a flat horizonof lake and girl and the stacks of sky hammering the sky into us the sky entering us down to our ankles forever.We will never get the lake out of our hair. We grew like the poison vines along the north/southcontinental divide. I straddled it when I drove and was driven around town I went with boys across the lineto buy liquor on Sundays. I skirted your girlhood home. I skirted your Moon Cemeteryand dipped my skin into Diamond, into Eagle [End Page 171] Lakes at night where I lit cigarettes and rejected marriageproposals. You and I, all our piss and waste flowing into the bowl of Michigan, which means ālarge lake,ā which meanswe white people saying Lake, Large Lake, in half a language our people wanted to kill. You were born in Michigan Citywhich is in Indiana, which is the same misnomer I was born in murder on our tongues; you have noted the Wal-Mart parking lotand its covering of native graves. You have shown up at the damp threshold of my remembering, and now I am born lushlyagain, given permission to name this dark paradise. [End Page 172] Natalie Solmer Natalie Solmer is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Indianapolis Review, and she is an Assistant Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis. Her poetry can be found in North American Review, Briar Cliff Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. Copyright Ā© 2019 Pleiades and Pleiades Press