elegy
Emily Hyland
we should bury it, that last time together
prone on the bed at your mother’s, the last time
air rough between us I sought
anything worth latching onto legs akimbo
you pushed anger out with such energetic force of thrust
life zapped into my body and grew there for weeks
and weeks she grew there
until some doctor dug into my tunnel
and excavated that little gem not buried
dumped instead into a biohazard bin
in the hallway of medical suite 3125
while mom waited to receive me
in a stiff lobby chair, you did not
even call to ask are you ok? bury that,
bury it all into the soil, into jetty stone,
we buried my dad every year in cape cod tradition
not a family with much ritual but the annual dig
dug his shallow beach grave with kid-claws damp
and plastic shovels flimsy they would bend
yellow and red each one a beach ball stripe
then we’d stand around our work of art
toes to chin, patted over him with coastal earth
I relished tossing sand on his buxom dad-belly
and pointing bunny ears behind bald patch
in the sun-stained polaroid mom would snap
all those years, I never remembered his emergence
just spoonfuls of salty-pawed shale
we rushed to toss onto his body
like at a funeral our sandy fingernails in premonition
burying our father on some cumulonimbus morning
drowsy under umbrellas in black with mealy hands
*The line we should bury it is borrowed from the poem “bildungsroman” by sam sax.
Emily Hyland’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Apple Valley Review, Apricity Magazine, armarolla, Belle Ombre, Belletrist Magazine, The Brooklyn Review, The Conglomerate, Free State Review, Maryland Literary Review, Meadow, Midwest Quarterly, Mount Hope Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, Open: Journal of Art & Letters, Palette Poetry, Perceptions Magazine, Sixfold, Stirring: A Literary Collection, The Virginia Normal, Visitant Lit, Wild Roof Journal, and Stretching Panties. A restauranteur and English professor from New York City, she received her MFA in poetry and her MA in English education from Brooklyn College. Her cookbook, Emily: The Cookbook, was published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, in 2018. She is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and studies writing with Mirabai Starr at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Emily is the cofounder of the national restaurant groups Pizza Loves Emily and Emmy Squared Pizza.