Julia Watson
Things That Last To 15
An angleworm, a chicken, a fox
in good health. Pink peonies, latched
roots on an iron gate. The poison
of monkshood in frost. A Lenten
rose, a red car: its idle hum.
Crabapples and its tree. Outside
the first home, Arnie,
the first dog, sleeps alone.
The gap between the couple’s
age. The crack of pavement
beyond the gate—a dried and set
wound. There are bags within
the car: bent pictures, rust pots,
a white dress torn to bits.
She Tells You She Only Married Your Dad For Children
Lyrics taken from Rod Stewart’s “Rhythm of My Heart”
Wrapped in separate boxes, Sis gifts you the two
pictures for Christmas. You are eighteen
and love is still alive somewhere, lurking.
They are dancing at a holiday party. In one,
Mama’s scorpion red lips are parted, blonde hair
flames getting higher. Liquor and lightning
in her veins. The good bones beveling
her heel towards your father. In the other,
his leather loafers, tassels rattling, salt
and pepper mustache shifting like the handle
of a slot machine. Dad often muses they were mistaken
for professional dancers. Mama sometimes mumbles this too.
At this party, they wore each other out and retreated
to refreshments. At this party, they each wore black.
So Mama says she knew the ocean
never meets the sky and rivers run straight
into gutters, that love never exists
in an office cocktailed hour. All you know
is they face each other on your bookshelf.
Please, you think, let me still exist
in this other place, where the floor’s
not been crossed. The song’s just begun.
Julia Watson
Julia Watson earned her MFA from North Carolina State University. She’s the Writer Liaison from Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things and a Poetry Editor at Chaotic Merge. In 2021, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was a finalist in the NC State Poetry Contest and Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize. She won the 2018 Sassaman Award for Outstanding Creative Writing from Florida State University. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in The Shore, The Hellebore, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, among other journals. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her grumpy dogs. You can read more of her work at juliawatsonwriter.com.