To The (Surgeon) Mother of a Poet I Knew

I heard you stood him up on his eighth birthday,
his frail nails scratching dirt from the door’s screen,
breathing in and out the ominous night as he waited
for you to show. Is the spirit of darkness in you too?
How many lives have you collected in your time?
See, your son, the poet I knew, is some kind of
surgeon like you— not knowing what the problem is
until he takes a look inside. When he looked inside
me, he found a moon and a penitentiary.
The moon is not an obstruction, he said, just doing its job—
rounding up the wild things. He was good, your son,
at placing matters in perspective. He must’ve learned
from you, suturing wounds on the skin into nothing,
flipping other people’s hearts in the right places,
that even the smallest cruelties can make a home
in the body. Do you think it’s true— those of us
who look too hard can become monsters? I’d like to
behead your thick subconscious, excise the crickets
behind your eyes, and find out for myself.
I’ve known the cold scalpel against my back
that was like being kissed without asking each time
your son opened my body, his fingers like shadows
creeping into every dark socket, extracting the lunatics,
as he called them, the sorriest, imperfect creatures,
seduced into their prisons like animals, hungry
for moonlight—the silent circle cutting through
the blackness. He would examine each wildling,
your boy, one by one, palpating their warm wanting
bellies with his thumb, observing the soft lunar glow,
a pendulum swaying in each of their eyes,
and declare, Yes, yes, this is where the pain starts.

Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Hollie has been a finalist twice for the Peseroff Prize at Breakwater Review, Greg Grummer Poetry Prize at Phoebe, Fugue’s Annual Contest, and has received Honorable Mention in Broad River Review. Additionally, “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017).

Judge Sibyl James is the author of thirteen books–poetry, fiction and travel memoirs–including In Chinawith Harpo and Karl (CALYX Books), The Adventures of Stout Mama (Papier-Mache Press), China Beats (Egress Studio Press), The Last Woro Woro to Treichville: A West African Memoir (StringTown Press), The Grand Piano Range (Black Heron Press) and most recently The Mother of Invention (a children’s book from CALYX). She has taught at colleges in the U.S., China, Mexico, and–as Fulbright professor–Tunisia and Cote d’Ivoire. As writer in residence, she has worked for the Washington State Arts Commission, the Seattle Arts Commission, Seattle Arts and Lectures, and the Seattle School District. Her writing has received awards from Artist Trust and the Seattle, King County and Washington State arts commissions.