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Meredith Faulkner

A Chiropractor, an Arborist, or Maybe Just a Lumberjack and a Priest

I am a tree post-hurricane,
trunk half-straight with misaligned vertebrae,
dreaming of the days I spent scraping the sky,
not trapped in limbo, the mouth to hell.
(Wind flies overhead like a sad memory.)
 
Even if I grow, my reach
will only go towards low-
flying buzzards, not the open
sky I once called home.
I am Tantalus, a doomed hypotenuse.
 
I am a tree in forest of corpses
held up by stilts, all Quasimodos
with hot metal braces strapped to their backs
that I could not see until now,
humbled and resigned to peering up skirts.
 
Now I know what all trees know:
my roots are poisonous.
I was born bound by skin.
I can never straighten myself,
never be right until I lie like a cradle, a coffin.
 
I am a tree begging for a saw
now that I see that the music I thought
came from me was the wind
and birds using me. Even the clouds
have painted over where I once stood.
 
I wish I could laugh at this cosmic joke,
But I cannot breathe while my spine is stilled curved,
not until earth shivers when I hit the dirt.
My soul screams for a Chiropractor, an Arborist,
but I am crooked; death is all I know.
 
I am a tree born buried, living half-dead.
Schrödinger would wrap his theories around me like Christmas.
I could only germinate under six feet of dirt,
and despite the pain of scoliosis
I am not blind to myself anymore--
 
I see that I can never be straight until I am broken, supine.

Biography

Picture
Meredith Faulkner lives in North Carolina with her husband and cat. Her work has appeared in tenderness lit, MICRO // MACRO, and Nightingale and Sparrow. She tweets @faulknerwrites1. ​
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ISSN 2639-426X
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  • Home
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  • Issues
    • Issue 49
    • Issue 48
    • Issue 47
    • Issue 46
    • Issue 45
    • Issue 44
    • Issue 43
    • Issue 42
    • Issue 41
    • Issue 40
    • Issue 39
    • Issue 38
    • Issue 37
    • Issue 36
    • Issue 35
    • Issue 34
    • Issue 33
    • Issue 32
    • Issue 31
    • Issue 30
    • Issue 29
    • Issue 28
    • Issue 27
    • Issue 26
    • Issue 25
    • Issue 24
    • Issue 23
    • Issue 22
    • Issue 21
    • Issue 20
    • Issue 19
    • Issue 18
    • Serenity
    • Issue 17
    • The Audio Room
    • Issue 16
    • Issue 15
    • Issue 14
    • Play It Again
    • Issue 13
    • Issue 12
    • Issue 11
    • Issue 10
    • Issue 9
    • Issue 8
    • Issue 7
    • Issue 6
    • Hand to Mouth
    • Issue 5
    • Issue 4
    • Issue 3
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 1
  • Submissions