This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Burn by Sara Henning (Southern Illinois University Press 2024).
A Brief History of Skin
In the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the loverly stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
Return it, the moles constellating my right shoulder,
deep brown poultice. My husband once kissed
his way into its world. Bless it, biopsy knife
swiping through my flesh, my faith Unname it
Nevus spilus, little Andromeda galaxy stretching my skin,
its infinite halo of dark matter. Unwhisper the word
melanoma, those sleepless weeks I swore
it glimmered, debris from an exploded star.
Unclench my hand from its jigger of vodka,
uncurl my husband’s touch from my shoulder.
Unwhisper the words cancer, mother.
Unburden my skin from the blazing Utah May,
where, one spring, the sun ravaged me.
Untangle me from recklessness, untruss
the tumors from my mother’s blood.
Return her record player’s needle shirring
through scarred vinyl, Mick Jagger throating
blues through her house on Victory Drive.
Rebridle her hair to its messy knot,
unveil the dime-sized mole on the back of her neck.
Give them back, my father’s words for it—
forget-me-not of the angels, plush field of stars.
Give her back her body when she still loved
my father, when I still moved within her.
But if you can give me nothing, God,
return her name for me—little one,
infinite meadow of heaven.
Sara Henning (she/her) is the author of the poetry collections Burn (Southern Illinois University Press, 2024), a 2022 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Editor’s Selection; Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; and View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. She was awarded the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize and the 2019 Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award. She’s a recipient of scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Marshall University, where she coordinates the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.
Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency.
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