Three Poems by Jonie McIntire
Why Women Drink
It comes down
to a question of weight —
the mass of ourselves,
bearing repeated
ups and downs.
We sing the sinner’s
hail mary hopes,
eat wafers
wanting whole bodies.
We pray to ascend,
blame gravity and our
thick with sin
skin for keeping us
heavy. Our shoulders
palmed by guilt,
we are grateful
for sweet glasses
of liquid savior.
We find the son’s blood
makes us float,
yes my lord yes,
weightless as clouds,
light as a rib,
as an apple seed,
hollow of everything
but the knowledge
that liquid reaches down
to roots and we
are gracious earth
from which
everything grows.
Rain
I’ve made the rain no promises.
It issues dares, gets
its big brother
Thunder to shout
but I flip on the television,
push buttons
lazy and couched.
The rain whispers
to passing cars
about my insolence.
Its cousin Lightning
flashes my windows.
They spread gossip in
scattered light across the streets
in little beads mid-air.
But the rain and I,
we’ve never
made promises.
So it will have to tap
at my window
and wait.
Feeder Fish
Waiting for the man at the pet store
to pour crickets into a plastic bag
for an albino leopard gecko
hungry at home, a boy watches goldfish
swimming their circles,
as shoppers wander the pet store,
some rushing to work or home,
some staring slow and mindless
at ferrets, bottom feeders, bearded
dragons and a cockatiel
who will not stop talking.
The feeder fish in the tank
are not all the orange
of goldfish. Some are all white,
or dark face, dark tail.
The boy watches a few
he thinks are prettiest,
the way their fins fan out
like smoke or morning clouds.
But the man with the crickets
shoves the bag into the boy’s hand,
scurries over to the tank where
people are circling
and he scoops into the heart
of everything, running the bag
on top of the water
to catch a puddle, then
pouring ten fish in,
eleven cents each, or
ten for a dollar.
Jonie McIntire is author of the forthcoming chapbook, Semidomesticated (Red Flag Poetry), along with chapbooks Beyond the Sidewalk (Nightballet Press, 2017) and Not All Who Are Lost Wander (Finishing Line Press, 2016). She hosts a popular long-standing monthly poetry reading series called Uncloistered Poetry in Toledo, Ohio. Her writing has been published in anthologies, print journals and online journals, and has even been stamped into cement as part of the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo’s Sidewalk Poetry series. Learn more about her at https://www.joniemcintire.net.