Login
Forgot Password?

OR

Login with Google Login with Twitter Login with Facebook
  • Join
  • Profiles
  • Groups
  • SuicideGirls
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Shop
Vital Stats

tadkil

Member Since 2004

Followers 164 Following 501

  • Everything
  • Photos
  • Video
  • Blogs
  • Groups
  • From Others

The Wishbone

Nov 9, 2022
6
  • Facebook
  • Tweet
  • Email

In the still of night
old fears emerge.

Those closest relatives
you’d found barely
bearable, cornucopias
of family dystopia
spilling into
“amusing anecdotes”
decades later
like a much-thumbed
rosary, or litany
of the dead.

Old vexations,
tics and mannerisms,
wincing at the pinch
of the drunk uncle
(so handsome!—but
died young),
stooping to avoid
the hacking cough
soon to propel
your Hungarian grandfather
to his grave.

Those years!
Pride redacts the grave
long heartbreak of loving
the one more than
he’d loved you,
who’d favored your
sister, and not you
who at twelve rolled
your eyes, such
boredom!—jaws
wrenched in yawns

at Thanksgiving
twinge of nausea
clammy-white turkey
carcass and skin, stink
of eviscerated gut
and in the “gravy boat”
coarse curdles of
grease. Pope’s nose,
giblets and innards,
“wishbone” carefully
removed from the ravaged
skeleton and perched atop
the fridge to dry,
forgotten and forlorn
until rediscovered
in December, brittle
and easily broken—
Make a wish, Joyce!—but
what could you have
possibly wished, so young?
To be older?
To be out of there?
To be—where?

Stunned now to recall
how all at that table
are gone now, mere
ectoplasm in a dim
region of the brain.
How heedless you’d loved
them after all, as
they’d loved who-
ever it was, was you.

Joyce Carol Oates

October 31, 2022

More Blogs

  • 09.12.23
    0

    The Kiss

    The Kiss BY KURT BROWN That kiss I failed to give you. How…
  • 05.09.23
    1

    On the Pulse of Morning BY MAYA ANGELOU

    On the Pulse of Morning BY MAYA ANGELOU A Rock, A…
  • 04.12.23
    0

    Oh Say Can You See BY VIKTORIA VALENZUELA

    Oh Say Can You See BY VIKTORIA VALENZUELA By the dawn's …
  • 04.03.23
    0

    Morning Song By Jim Moore

    It’s a lucky day for me if they are burning on the hill the cut a…
  • 03.15.23
    0

    Since There Is No Escape by Sara Teasdale

    Since There Is No Escape BY SARA TEASDALE Sin…
  • 03.07.23
    0

    GUILT MOUNTAIN

    Guilt Mountain By Ishmael Reed …
  • 12.01.22
    0

    Sick Day by RC DeWinter

    ABOUT EDITOR CONTACT US PRIVACY POLICY …
  • 11.27.22
    0

    Diaspora Sonnet Traveling Between Apartment Rentals By Oliver de la …

    Diaspora Sonnet Traveling Between Apartment Rentals By O…
  • 11.25.22
    0

    Cities with their fools for God

    Cities with their fools for God Nicole Brossard …
  • 11.22.22
    0

    Tuesday

    Moving away is only to the boundaries of the self. Better to sta…

We at SuicideGirls have been celebrating alternative pin-up girls for:

23
years
8
months
25
days
  • 5,509,826 fans
  • 41,393 fans
  • 10,327,617 followers
  • 4,593 SuicideGirls
  • 1,123,960 followers
  • 14,912,794 photos
  • 321,315 followers
  • 61,373,207 comments
  • Join
  • Profiles
  • Groups
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Shop
  • Help
  • About
  • Press
  • LIVE

Legal/Tos | DMCA | Privacy Policy | 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements Compliance Statement | Contact Us | Vendo Payment Support
©SuicideGirls 2001-2025

Press enter to search
Fast Hi-res

Click here to join & see it all...

Crop your photo