“Alarm to Threat” by Kim Mannix
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Alarm to Threat” by Kim Mannix, which first appeared in Poetry Pause in December 2020.
Alarm to Threat
By Kim Mannix
1.
More frog croak than coyote howl, nightly cry – Is anyone out there? If I didn’t think it’d wake the neighbours, I’d scream. Just to dislodge it from my throat, lonely lump of fear and anger. Clear night, brisk. On the deck I count stars. Cosmic census. Cold creeping through my socks, into my skin, permeating my heels. If I freeze in place like Ötzi the Iceman, who’ll be here to find me in 5000 years?
2.
In my top kitchen cabinet, I store Mom’s pitcher. The colour of milk, smooth. Looking at it is a comfort, yet I hide it. Well-kept, but still there’s dust. I took it down for Easter brunch. Found a spool of red thread inside, needle thrust diagonally through. Did I put it there? This memory another thing stored just out of reach.
3.
Accept the Past, Embrace the Future, Live in the Present. Wisdom of the dollar store Buddha, also jammed in the top cabinet. I endorsed the sentiment. Once upon a time. Believed the horn-shaped seashell I found on Long Beach might’ve severed from a unicorn too. Relic of a past, magical by nature of its distance from now. Reminder that all creatures are temporary.
4.
My daughter draws a frog. Green. Happy. I’m pulled back to biology class. Lay the frog on its back, spread out its limbs, pin them to the tray. Make a small incision with a scalpel. Cut up the center of the body, being careful to slice through the skin only. All the facts scientific dissection omits. My frog was female. Abdomen packed with black eggs. The resolve it takes just to be born. The luck. When mating or raising alarm to threat, some frogs call so loudly they can be heard a mile away.
Copyright © Kim Mannix
First appeared in Poetry Pause on December 3, 2020.
Kim Mannix (she/her) lives on Treaty Six territory in Sherwood Park, Alberta. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Canadian and American journals and anthologies, as well as on Edmonton Transit. She currently serves as Vice President on the board of the Edmonton Poetry Festival and is a member of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, The Edmonton Stroll of Poets and the League of Canadian Poets. She is a contributing editor of Watch Your Head, a climate crisis anthology, and an entertainment and lifestyle writer for MSN.
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