Lyd Havens: Sometimes I Dream

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Heirloom

I once found a dead rattlesnake still poised for the kill:    

     uncoiled        head angled     jaw completely

            unhinged          Years later

and I’m still Googling

              can+rattlesnakes+have+heart+attacks

                 rattlesnakes+heat+stroke

                 are+rattlesnakes+afraid

My father used to loan me his pocketknife

       when I walked up our dirt road to check

the mailbox         My only hobby    if a man

        ever comes up to you     have both blades ready

stab him quick and not just once    the shell of it:

     faux mother of pearl     reeking of tobacco

     warm to the touch even in winter

the blades: always more dull than my father remembered

       I grew up watching him coax      splinters out

of his thumb with them   slit the throats of stubborn weeds

       sunburned on the windowsill of his trailer     Years later

estrangement still wasn’t foreshadowing    I told him

     I’m terrified of men        and he laughed  

that’s ridiculous     don’t you know there are much scarier things

     in this world?         War?          Flash floods?               Rattlesnakes?

Sometimes I think about falling asleep while clutching a knife

         Sometimes I dream of my father     the voice

I haven’t heard in three months    the face I haven’t seen in eight

      there are two blades on either side of my coiled palm

and my teeth taste like venom—

---

Lyd Havens is the author of the chapbook I Gave Birth to All the Ghosts Here (Nostrovia! Press, 2018). The winner of the 2018 ellipsis… Poetry Prize, their work has been published in Ploughshares, The Shallow Ends, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. . Lyd is currently an undergraduate at Boise State University, where they are studying creative writing and history. They can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @lizardhavens.