Meghan Flaherty
Lives of the Saints
The man who lived across the hall from my father died in his
apartment. The landlord said we could take whatever we wanted before
he paid someone to clean the place out. We tiptoed. The man was
schizophrenic; there were papers everywhere. I took Lives of the
Saints and a dictionary marked up. Pity: kindly sorrow. Grief: sharp
sorrow. For years I revisited the pencil scribbles of the dead,
goosebumps every time I saw a new note, indecipherable, from which the
man was reconstituted in my room. My father took nothing. He was dying
at the time but I didn’t see the significance of what we were doing. I
thought it was fun. Shame: the painful feeling arising from the
consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc.
done by oneself or another. Standing on the subway platform my father
said: I know what you mean, I remember being at the arcade watching a
man who couldn’t find the tickets he won from skee-ball; they were
there but he didn’t see them and he just kept looking and looking, it
just killed me it just broke my heart I still remember it fifty years
later, I should have said something.
Let Me Be Mint
It’s not that I think I’m better than refrigerator life. I can see
meaning in a washing machine
I don’t need a retreat to Costa Rica to worship
But let me be a sovereign notion
Let me be an oil spill
Grant my heart oxygen without tarnish
A candle worth of light can be a weapon
Sew my fingers into fist
Trace my son’s bloodline via receipt
Let me pad on bare feet through dark rooms between ribs The static
water sound between heartbeats Let me be mint because
you can’t unfuck a mother tongue. Anoint me focal. Let me be sun
And how come this motherfucker gets to be rubber while I’m stuck
tack and rust? Where’s my god
damn nimbus? And why won’t my wings hold anything but water?
Throw me on the grill. Serve me with Boca Chica rum
and Mucho Mango Arizona Iced Tea and Band-Aids and ashtrays
Trick me into being
I thought Dad was going to live Let me be seventeen
Grant epiphanies: There’s no such thing as the friend zone
I don’t believe in harmony
Let me be unemployed
Let my son hear somersault when I talk about assault
Let him think Aagh is a goddess
Turn his bedroom to ziggurat
Turn cray-cray to Mayday
Let my sluts-in-arms be thorned and split-tailed, Kali-tongued with
bubbles in the gills
Let me ring
Lead me not to fuckboys
but to my beautiful waterlogged wings
Meghan Flaherty is an Italian-American poet and memoirist living in New Jersey. She received the Walter Glospie Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets in 2016, and received an honorable mention for the same award in 2017. Meghan also received an honorable mention for the Kathy Potter Memorial Writing Award in 2017. She is co-editor of the literary journal, Paths. With the help of her mentor, Edvige Giunta, Meghan is writing a memoir.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 