Sophie Farthing

June in the Garden

The bamboo shoots are tossing their slim stalks
higher than the neighbor’s rented roof.
I don’t know the names of the birds that are singing,
but I know the hummingbird at the nectar flute,
sipping crystal with her snake’s tongue. Her wings
spin a tilde between frazzled sentences of Spanish moss.
Grape vines poke fingers over a fence sand-washed
with sunshine. Now the trees begin their breath-work.
In the frog-pond, lily pads hob-knob with chuckling water
while nearby a honeybee mumbles to itself,
stinger-deep in a Rose of Sharon. The gate is swung wide,
settled in dirt. Cicadas are singing sex tunes.
I can feel the garden’s heartbeat against my skin,
its pulse in the faded curtains on the porch,
its kiss on the dimple in Taylor’s cheek. The cat’s tail
twitches as he watches through the screen
the hanging basket by the porch umbrella. Ian says
only a wren would nest in such a silly place, but I know better.
The wren and I, we build our nests where we are loved.

Unburial

My mother had warned us away
from the dump behind the barn,
but in November she put on Daddy’s jean jacket,
rubber boots,
gardening gloves.
My mother said, “Watch for snakes and
broken glass.”
We dragged mildewed carpets from beneath
damp forest loam, uncovering
the rotted corpses of dish mops,
bathmats, sponges, crockery,
a decrepit Hoover,
a TV with rabbit ears.
Because I begged her, my mother said
I could keep the salad plate.
I scrubbed it at the pump until it shone:
red and green chickens
in a field of wheat.
The salad plate held pride of place in the treehouse
where I served plastic food,
orphaned and resourceful
in battered, fuchsia-colored Crocs.
Other girls dressed their Barbies,
watched Wizards of Waverly Place,
played soccer and learned ballet.
By the hour I considered the salad plate,
dreaming parentless dreams.

Years later, on a miserable family trip,
I locked eyes with the salad plate
in an antique shop
in Boone. I had started grad school.
I had lost a lot of weight.
I was trying to say I was gay, but
my mother did not want to hear that.
I was trying to say, I’m afraid of you,
but she did not want to hear that either.
I locked eyes
with the salad plate.
We recognized each other.
We didn’t speak.
The salad plate wore the same green polka dots,
the scarlet rooster’s feathers,
the sheaf of grain. It sported a price tag
for $3.99 inked in ball-point pen.
I wore the same frightened face
behind my smile.
I felt like I was going to cry,
but I swallowed it down.
For a long moment,
we held each other’s gaze.
Then my mother called me.
I walked away.

Sophie Farthing (she/her) is a queer poet and artist living in South Carolina in the USA. Her work has appeared in outlets including Right Hand Pointing, Beyond Queer Words, Impossible Archetype, and Anti-Heroin Chic. Her poetry is also featured in the horror anthology it always finds me from Querencia Press. She is the 2024 recipient of the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Poetry from the South Carolina Academy of Authors.