Maryan Nagy Captan: Blood Pact

blood pact

1

he orders you to drop the sewing pins
their tips metallic and candy-like
from the fourth floor window
while your family celebrates below.

she turned one today
the yard is littered with pink.

your relatives
a familiar shade of lobster
prattle on in pairs.

this party is hers
this adoration is hers
the cake with her name on it.

he has stolen the pins from
your grandmother’s kit:
a tannish woven basket
frayed with a broken latch.

you drop the pins into the crowd
like kamikaze pilots,
trusting gravity’s intentions
and aiming at no one in particular.

2

when he was born
your mama poured
every ounce of
pluck
into raising him
up right.
an unshakable ray
aimed at his chest,
scanning each hiccup
and turtle-lipped yawn.

3

to pacify the sting,
you push the blood
between your teeth,
a smear of pink, faint
on your lower lip.
he pulls back his hand,
the flow now ferocious,
his blood drizzling into
the grass beneath you.

he has taught you the act of vanishing,
the art of mischief,
has secured your place
in family history as co-conspirator,
as Troubled Shadow.

4

in a game of tag,
you are always it.
you must get rid of whatever it is,
but it is you.

5

dressed in summer sweat and finally at the lake, he presents the object. on the way to the lake, the object remains hidden. you wonder if it’s the toaster, you wonder if it’s the telephone, you wonder if it’s a pack of gum or your father’s gun or the screws from your rocking chair that he'll throw into the lake and now the joke’s on you.

her doll is not new but a hand-me-down. it is wearing lace, a white christening gown speckled with mud. its shape leaves an imprint, wet on his back.

“You should cut the hair off,” he grins, holding out the pair of shears from the shed.

you reach for the doll, squeeze the middle hard to make certain he can’t yank it back. he can tell you’re not convinced, your brows cartoonishly knit. he knows you; he knows how you buckle, what triggers the tears.

the grass by the lake is long, it scratches and houses bloodthirsty demons. you slap your shin, you slap your collarbone, you slap your chest, it echoes, you slap your temple, twice. this wilderness is feral. you swear the scissors nearly catch fire in the sunlight. the lake water must be boiling, its fish now ghosts.

6

when you were born,
her love like cell division
split and split again
as he looked on.

7

you are drawn to the tone of his laughter
you wince and rue and crave
a sardonic approval.

he tells you his mattress is stuffed
with hundreds,
a million sacks of coins.

your grandmother fears he’ll split concrete
with his stomp,
begs her god for mercy.

where did he learn this?

you are too young to ask better questions,
to think past your father.
perhaps the answer is your father.

he carries on.

8

you imagine you are running away from home, that the house itself is it. you pretend that he has taken the lead to guide the two of you to freedom, the home away from home. the smell of bacon encircles the yard. the lawn is newly mowed with bits of grass collecting on your sneakers. your sister watches from a distance with legs so small she couldn’t keep up if you ran on your knees. it is nearly lunch time.

he runs you around for such a long while,
your breathing labored and polluting your play.
when you tag his dampened back,
you are breathless.

but in the curl of his lip, he is ready to retaliate.
it is always a game of retaliation.

he does you the favor of a ten second head start.
you are breathless.
he shoves you to the ground,
a hard deliberate tag that tangles your braids.

you are distraught,
the bacon is burning,
you can smell that it has charred,
the air now soiled.

you are overwhelmed by his limbs,
the grass clippings in your hair and mouth.

your sister takes note of the scuffle
as the sweat drips off of his nose and onto yours.

9

he dares you to eat the play doh, to try it

he dares you to place one of the legs

onto your tongue

the harvestman limping in the dirt

he dares you to pluck

the blinking light off

the firefly

place it onto your tooth

and you do it and then do it again

the next day to make your cousin laugh

he dares you to stick the sewing pin through

the tough skin of your finger

now do it 9 more times

he dares you to

he dares you to but

he dared you to

10

you learn that human beings need oxygen to survive and entertain the idea of shutting off the air in your bedroom, locking the door and sealing the three of you inside. you and your sister will breathe fine, you’ve found a way to extract the oxygen that brothers need from your own. first, he will wake up coughing then he will turn blue and then he will vanish into thin air.

housewife

the skirt only fluffs when you’ve wrung it through twice.

pour in hot soup to rinse out the wounds
save sap from chopped trees
trees chopped by hands belonging to a man tending fire
while the mother shapes sap into toys for the children.

toys for the children and soup to rinse out wounds,
an infantile comfort.
a comfort which held up
until the children
outgrew the coddle and began chopping wood like
their father.

their father,
a man who walks on all fours,
will shoot a doe from behind
empty its insides
and use its parts for the children.

see, toys made of sap
seldom cross paths with axe-wielding children.

she prepares their meals: a routine,
bows her head on the counter
because she’s dizzy
but doesn’t miss a beat
when the kettle steams
she thinks
how lovely it would be
to leave
and swim in the ocean all day,
meet a stranger at midnight,
kiss the cleft,
and have him sit funny on a mattress.

like a stranger would at first,
seeing that all new things are funny.
have him lay funny on a mattress
and take love from him.

Is there much else funnier than taking love from a stranger?

a man who proposes marriage in bed is a man who chops
to build
to burn

is a man who wraps around the mother like tendrils but appeals to thorny children who grow sweet at first
then bitter, uncaring
towards a mother who still kisses scars in company and squirms at the sight of spoiled meat.

see, the mother (much stranger) cannot crawl
on hands and knees to support the weight of three.

with skirts fluffed and wrung through twice,
lashes fanned and pointing in all the directions she prays to travel,
to the direction of the ocean,
to the direction of a stranger
who eases towards the surface,
his face speckled with bits
his eyes pleased and pleasing…
a stranger
who eases towards the surface
to lay funny
on a mattress.

Maryan Nagy Captan is an experimental writer, educator, and performance poet based in Austin, Texas. She is a Fellow at The Michener Center for Writers and serves as the Marketing Director for Bat City Review. Maryan is the author of copy/body (Empty Set Press, 2017) and an alumna of the Disquiet International Literary Program. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Egyptian Writers Folio (Anomaly Press), Foundry, AJAR, Apiary Magazine, Mantra Review, Boneless/Skinless, Sundog Lit, and elsewhere.