mutating the signature

W.F. Roby and Emily Van Duyne have wrapped the process section of their issue, and they are off to work on their curated issue. That work will be done offline over the next couple of weeks. We will publish the finished collection by the end of the month.

In an exciting development, we have asked the W.F. and Emily to stay on as Mutating the Signature’s resident poets, and they have said yes. They will be blogging at Teacup, which can be accessed by clicking the “Read Teacup” tab in the navigation bar above. There is no content at Teacup right now, but give W.F. and Emily a few hours, and they will have the new space all filled up with savory poetry and prose.

– Nathan Moore and Dana Guthrie Martin

The child was a sin, a fiend, unwanted, he could buy & sell
his keeper & he knew it. I tell you now, so you can

know—this happened once before. I was his
nanny, there was beauty on all sides, hills so green I thought

the earth was lit up from below, thought those flames
might claim them, row by grassy row, I

thought they were the children of the emerald
burst & broke from Satan’s crown, as he barreled

down from heaven into hell. Wait— before
he fell, a different name—Lucifer, light bringer, morning

star, magnificent & muscled, no conflict yet, no
blame. A stasis, if you will. Love, there’s much to tell

you still— take my fear
of novel song. Whole years new rhythms wronged

my heart the way Cyrillic hits my eyes: new!
they clattered, open! but I snapped its shutters

tight against their cries. My heart was such a settled
thing. As finished as the single, stony diamond

in my ring, (I pawned it just the other day) unscratchable,
a shining, hard display. Love, the child’s

heart was wicked, no light could thrive
in there, not one scant ray, or so I thought. His mother

brought him trinkets from each place she left
him for: Russian trapper with a sickle

and a star, trimmed in some poor rabbit’s coat, strings
of agate from an Indian bazaar, Tibetan prayer

flags, gelt, a five pound note. . .
He fingered them each time she closed the door

and left again. He hated me, I hated him. We were two
awful, wary dogs trapped in a ring— oh,

that’s a lie, he was the king, I was his serving girl, unbidden,
Jane Eyre sans Mr. R, I ferried him about

in their sleek car, Charon with a pouty bottom
lip, perpetually glossed, I bobbed and weaved

each time he tossed another slur my way, or winged
a die-cast tractor at his prey. Love, I had no talent

for this child. Then one night, I woke alone
to cries so wild I bolted like a shot

into his room, flicked on the light. His eyes
were open, but he couldn’t see, the clock read three

am, his little body buckled in the night, all
drenched in sweat. I didn’t want to touch, wouldn’t let

myself believe, (the diamond in my chest could barely
breathe) the child could grieve: eyes wide

open, body still asleep, one word keening
from his little mouth on stuttery repeat: Mama.

Like I said, this happened once before— my heart
split into two, my heart was his, and his heart

was a tiny, waged war, and we beat
side by side. I lifted his hot body

and we cried.

You’re not awake yet. Where you sleep
is wet and warm and impossible. I picture you
wearing a fantastic bird’s jewel tones, half again
as feathery, wearing a beak trimmed in gold. You’re
pecking at your mother — Wake up, wake up.
You will have a terrible father, a sometimes man,
a smoker. I can’t explain why I do it, the cigarette grabs me
by the shirt buttons, drags me to the alley. Just now
I watched the rain turn to sleet. A storm is when
the sky balls up its fists and knocks on all the windows.
If you want to picture me, start
with a clothespin, stretched into the sunlight
as a swimmer stretches at the buffet, opening the doors
to the store house. I’m twice as pale as that
drawn to a pinch, I have
the temper and airs of a salamander — fiery
and progressively less engaging — tongue
to crest to testes to the tail’s tip, a lizard
known for mumbling poems in the library. You’re not
awake yet, and from where you sleep my voice
comes in as thin as radio at the edges, twice as static,
pointed and dead maybe but defined in waves.
You need to know this world
is no soft crack in the riverbed, it is
not as warm as the imagination of you curled
like some rubber-banded wad of cash I’m earning, you
will never float as easily as you do
now in the last few hours of the life before your life.
You were picked like this — tall and giggly
with lots of hair and your name
drawn from the name of a favorite poet. And
that’s all. The sun is coming through
my blinds, I’ve finished my letter. It is time
to close the book and stare at the wall for a while.