Stephanie Garon

she/her www.garonstudio.com @garonstudio

Reflection

Silver spigot reflects sweet potato pie curves

Morphed breasts that roll into marshmallow hips, no legs

Show after dried drips are wrapped terrycloth tight

Into this venetian replica poised to handle

Heat like bar-b-que coals still simmering, intensity

That hums.

Stronger than August cicadas marking decades past, one turn

Conflates sine to cosine, just a glance

Of the eyes because

Lord knows it’s time for some hushpuppies.

TerraCotta

Love waddles

Like hips in the Alabama sun

Back and forth

Girth to birth

Heat radiating from ochre mines

Burying seeds and

Men,

They dig and dig and dig.

Water’s a gem here,

Ripening the chubby magnolia and white ash til

Summer’s fingertips press

Deep on Earth’s pottery wheel

Churning seedling into sapling.

Templo Mayor

I centered myself,

pressed lips to salty sandstone, pivoted towards

thousands watching then strutted higher:

I inhaled as you carved my heart

and threw the shell of my body down 30 steps to meet Coyolxauhqui,

who, despite being displaced herself,

cushioned the fraction remaining of my soul,

soothed my cuts,

shared her ground.

My blood strengthened Tlaloc, igniting red rain swells

flooding plain grasses like combed hairs of a doll.

Swollen valleys cradled your bed laden lovers, submerging their passion like

the pinching of a flame with bare fingers.

Waters creeped to your chin, pushed it East, where I rose and watched as you

floated.