Art: Harmonia by Márcia Tannure

Adoption, Day 88

6am is darker and darker red
every morning. To look at the sky,
the host-animal around us is returning

to life. I swing your legs parallel,

settle you across my lap, blanket us
both. You lean back into my arms,

all eyes, gulping your bottle. Bird
you sign, when the first crow
drags its commute across our windows,

in and out of child-sight, distant,

doubt-less. Sunrise, holding you,
drinking the milk of morning,

the clock’s slow release measures out
your seconds and mine, together.
In an hour, as I leave you, absence hand

ticking, I’ll see two cars, nose-to-nose, hoods

propped, red clamped to red, moments
after breathing electrons into each other.

This is not an accident. Uncoupled,
they still share a spark. I blow a kiss
to you, hands flat against the window,

ages, still, from understanding.

My Dad Dies and Years, as Molecules, Burn Hot, Rise Away from Us

You peel the peach synthetic
warmth up over your body, so
fine it sparks as you rush through,

as I soap the whorls
of our child’s ears. If my mom can’t

find sweetened, condensed milk,
I’ll make it, minus vanilla.
The topography of the new

globe, lit from within, casts
borders and names

on our boy’s face. His robot
dances, terrifies
his sister. The water weight

of today presses on this constellation
of our family. In the woodstove

firestorm, we watch the rising
for how heat thickens,
sweetens, creates. And

in the seconds we need
to solve and forget the problem,

the Alpenglow slips
over the head
of the mountain above us,

leaves us together,
here, in the dark.

My Dad Dies, and 2 Years Later, It’s National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day

Pain-hours, once tracked,
now bagged, jostle

as they leave my hand,
rattle the grey tub.

We drive on, peer through
the river’s sky-glassed surface

into the shallows, find
slow progress. Pills

of pink muscle haul
four years of eaten ocean

back to their fresh-
water source.

When I am this tall, my child
smiles, climbing the railing,

you will be dying.
I hope he’s right. Last year

he couldn’t even see the salmon.
Now, he claims his magic eye

swoops beneath the surface
to spot them first. Soon,

he’ll spy our carcinogens,
our opiates and isotopes,

asterisks in solution,
shimmering along

our expected life span,
join in my Anadromous

Prayer. May we both stand
still, feet flat on the bridge,

on the day sockeye return
to this water table scent memory

and find, finally, no trace
element of my father’s pain.

El Cap’s Dawn Wall was unclimbable.
So—sayeth the radio-profiled filmmaker
—these dudes had to rappel down,
map the expanse, train on the negligible

protrusions. They’d climb at night,
drop weight, and—in the end—rest
for days, to get some supple back
in their fingertips. They needed

a soft new part of themselves
to leave behind, in order to pass.

My Dad Dies, and Four Years Later I don’t hate cancer, or Valentine’s Day

—those contiguous minutes of breath
and touch, daisychained into his last hours
—the overstuffed couch, the memory foam
precipice. Even the exponential slowing

of his heart, pressed up to the asymptote
—the actually impossible rock face—
the hollow of his cheek, like the hollow
of mine, getting my eye that much closer

to the cliff—I don’t hate any of it.
I know that Dawn Wall ascent took
years. And one summer on the rock
—the radio insisted—waterfall

mist commingled with sun and a moment
when memory gusted up from Yosemite Valley
to form gumdrop-sized jewels. And I rested
there, among them, hovering,

telling the story within myself
even as I lived it.
That we were lucky
and knew it.

I don’t hate Valentine’s Day.
I hate the SuperBowl,
and these lies:
2nd and goal,
new stem cell trial.

And in the middle of it all,
my dad, drugged, scared,
stopping me on the hall rug,
foretelling the interception—
a known issue, known.

I said I’d take the day,
tomorrow, drive him in.
But in that February blue-
light sky, I dodged I-5,
missed 99, went one way,

over wrong way bridge.
Each loser idea was ten
minutes worse, until,
in the cross-town distance,
dad woke, hobbled, tripped

on that same fucking rug
and cracked his head,
beginning our two weeks’
journey into this
shithole ER

waitroom
world
where we sit
still, four
years on,

…and Every Day is Superbowl Sunday.

In the author’s words:

My work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Spillway, The Sugarhouse Review, The Briar Cliff Review, The Cincinnati Review and The Gettysburg Review. I am working on teaching my child the difference between a coin slot and a CD player, and my school the difference between just and only.    – c3 Crew

About the artist:

Márcia Tannure is a visual artist, born in Belo Horizonte, MG, began her artistic practice in her childhood, drawing on the walls of the house where she lived. Many years later studied porcelain painting in the Ceiça Martins atelier. studied observation design at INAP. and artistic design, studied and worked in the studio Diana Figueiredo. He made a jewelry course with Rogério Dietze, resin sculpture with Luma Ramos, and training in art therapy. a few years later moved to Rio de Janeiro / RJ, where he studied Sculpture at the School of Fine Arts of UFRJ. At the visual arts school Parque Lage studied contemporary art. Currently lives in Niterói / RJ, where she develops research in fire arts and has as great inspiration the nature.