Amy Lowell Prize Finalist, selected by Jason O’Toole
(Author photo by Karen Hobbs)
Mary Christine Delea is from Long Island, NY and now, after having lived all over the country, lives in Oregon. She has a Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing. She is the author of The Skeleton Holding Up the Sky, three chapbooks, and many published poems. She volunteers for a few different organizations, makes beaded jewelry, headdresses, and quilts, and leads poetry workshops in person and online.
The Secrets in the Silence
The women go to sleep with horses on their minds
and violence in their mouths. They wake up silent and sweaty,
ready to run. Eventually, the sun rises, warms their throats
like an extra blanket across their bodies. Out in the world,
the women see one another, discern the others’ gait.
Each woman knows the cues. They rein in the temptation to speak.
They know where bruises bloom beneath clothing.
They recognize the grimace when a splintered rib
is stressed in its fracture. They understand the hand that rubs
the shoulder, the side, the thigh, the base of the head,
and how it turns to fist. The broken finger. The back gash.
Lips that puff and swell, purse as blood pulses around chipped teeth.
The women know how days can gallop forward, and how lives
seem slow and fast at the same time. Any injury could be
the first step to the inevitable mute end. Their knowledge
could race through fields, apathetic to fences.
Instead, it is swallowed in dry mouths, harnessed
in stable language that leaves so much unsaid. If they spoke,
they’d discuss the horses they’ve seen in books and movies—
those bodies sleek and healthy, faster than any man,
stronger than kicks and whips. They do not speak. Someday,
they convey silently to each other, that will be us.