Planning the Breakout, by Margaret Benbow

Portrait of a Girl (Sophie Gray), by John Everett Millais (England) 1857

Planning the Breakout

We began as greenbones barely 
knowing to crawl: bumped against walls of the home cave
painted thick with ragemaster God, more hair
than a pack of wolves, and our own
perennially fruiting madonna whose sweet bell shape
was wrapped in lamb-smelling cardigans.

It was usually winter. The cold was a glittery grizzly,
with palisades of claws. We learned our place.
Northerners mate, ride and die on glaciers,
where the bride's dress is an icefall of lace
and the corpse's full beard snows over his earth suit.
Red twilight turned to black frost

and the red brand of the home
saved as it burned. The hive of the family
provided abundance of sweet.
Still, the year came when I (mama's pearl,
papa's youth of flint) thought
canaries die here
and plotted my own abduction.
Rock bricked me up,
front, bottom, top and sides. Cave fire gilded
the coma of time. Never mind. The young,
like murder, like art, will out
in the most surprising places. And stubborn blood
melts rock.

Margaret Benbow

Margaret Benbow's poems and stories have been published in The Ekphrastic Review, The Georgia Review, Triquarterly, The Antioch Review, and in other magazines and anthologies. Her first collection, Stalking Joy, won the Walt McDonald First Book award and was published by TTUP. she has recently finished a new collection, Wild Peter Thinks About His Humans.