Wax Lips

Abstract

Wax Lips Karyna McGlynn (bio) Not the Live Oak, or stump of it.Not the old Chevy in the back lot— chassis thrumming with yellow jackets.Not the grand façade's slice-of-cake smile, rugs rolled up & propped.Not the criminal fireplace, black-jawed, singe feathering the flocked wallpaper.Not the labial pink davenport unsprung— your hand deep in its ticking:Nothing doing. Nothing plump. Not the stair landing where your head stuck between ballusterswhere you kneeled for—was it years?— on the cocoa carpetas Maw-maw buttered your neck, your ears. Not where your aunt saw a ghost—the shade of Prim Lady rocking in her chair, but Up There:the final flight of stairs, where your uncle lived & failed to live.The steep flight, no light, the pitched ceiling, the single bed stillbornon its iron frame—its mattress stripped & striped like nightshirts. No, you must move this aside & grow low & pry the plywoodout like a rotted tooth. You must put your hand where you can't:down the maw of the doll-sized crawl space. You must siltyour hand & feel for the shine:fleck your hand in the pink fiberglass field to know [End Page 108] the plump thing, the plaything— & fetch it out. You must put the piece in your mouth— the soft cherry chew, the cartoonyou—you must find a mirror, undrape it, make the drop cloth plume, makethe mum pout speak: Come hither, you. Grotesque You. EventuallyYou—You must chew on it. [End Page 109] Karyna McGlynn Karyna McGlynn is the author of Hothouse (Sarabande, 2017), The 9-Day Queen Gets Lost on Her Way to the Execution (Willow Springs, 2016), and I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl (Sarabande, 2009). Her poems have recently appeared in Kenyon Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Georgia Review, Witness, and 32 Poems. She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston and was recently the Diane Middlebrook Fellow in Poetry at the University of Wisconsin. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Christian Brothers University in Memphis. Copyright © 2018 Middlebury College Publications