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Books of Poetry you won't want to miss!
Bridget Gage-Dixon has had poems included in Margie, The Iconoclast, The Cortland Review and The Adirondack Review, as well as in forthcoming issues of Poet Lore, Inkwell and Karamu.
Missing Girl
Because she was found behind
a church, an old black belt tight
around her throat, imprint
of teeth torn into her small, sloping breast,
nude and cold, cradled only by roots
bulging through the soil around her,
I bring my children to the living room
to practice screaming.
They aren’t thinking about
the broken
body of a child they didn’t know.
What they cannot forget is how many times
I’ve raised a finger to pursed lips, preached about manners.
They recall the hours of exile their raised voices
earned them, how they watched through smudged
windows as the yellow and red fingers
of a sunset snatched away the day.
For years, they’ve heard me
promise Boogie men
do not exist, watched me check for monsters
below beds, find nothing but stuffed dolls
hemorrhaging white batting or the legs of
Barbie dolls half chewed by a beagle.
I have spent years urging
them to say hello
to old women who stop in stores
to stroke their cheeks or offer pennies.
So when I ask them to show me how
they’d scream if a stranger spoke to them,
their shouts falter, cross their lips as laughter
that tumbles toward their ankles.
My own scream meets the air
as if it were a thing
borne years in my belly.
It strikes windows and pale yellow walls
before rising to the ceiling,
where it lingers just above our heads,
each of us still shaken
and once again silent.