Nicole Callihan
True Story w/ Groundhog
For years, I have lived in your backyard. Mornings, I eat buttercup and sheep sorrel, timothy and clover. Between your white azaleas, you have witnessed my burrow: it is my life’s work, my only work, my love nest and nursery, my retreat from the storm. Still, you want nothing to do with me. From beneath the star dogwood, you watch your husband shake cayenne pepper into the earth I’ve opened. Under a sky deeper than America, you are silent as he walks the perimeter of the garden, sprinkling blood meal and talcum powder, the soft clippings of your daughter’s blonde hair. I am not just shadow, but body and mother and maker. You, with the voice you were given, could you not speak for me? How dumb you look with your fat human mouth clamped shut. I only wanted what you want: to make it through this terrible time and into a softer season.
Nicole Callihan is the author of Henry River Mill Village (Arcadia Publishing, 2012), co-authored with Ruby Young Kellar; the poetry collection SuperLoop (Sock Monkey Press, 2014); and the poetry chapbooks: A Study in Spring (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2015), co-authored Zoë Ryder White and winner of the Baltic Writing Residency Chapbook Contest Award; The Deeply Flawed Human (Deadly Chaps Press, 2016); Downtown (Finishing Line Press 2017); and Aging (Yes, Poetry, 2018). Callihan is assistant director and senior language lecturer at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, and lives in Brooklyn.
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