Summer 2022 | Lauren Eggert-Crowe Reads "Queen of Any World That Took Me" – MQR Sound
Lauren Eggert-Crowe reads her poem, "Queen of any world that took me," for MQR's Summer 2022 issue.
By the time he arrived, night had lengthened by a whole minute. Near the close of pomegranate season, all that had ripened in the heat now smoldered in another heat. I knew exactly what kind of winter I was inviting in when his mouth met my own, when I tasted black pepper, chlorine, mint, ash. The warmth lingered like a dry red. I knew that bite would hold me there in the humming dark. He touched me as a swan touches thick water: velvet on silk. So I slackened, I tumbled deeper in sweet. But my word is forward. My mother is waiting. I am my mother and I wait for my unroping. So few know the trick, how to split the heart in ice water, let arils spill cleanly, skim the sponge off the heavy treasure. How red and wet I look to the boys with their amps and sweaty denim. Who hasn’t ignored the gods for a plate of cut fruit, jewel-packed and glowing like a lamp? I did what any daughter would do: I managed opposing promises and halved the year with a cold knife. I created more of myself. That didn’t keep anyone from blaming me for the weather. You try learning the thievery of your body kick-started the calendar. Then you, too, might offer yourself to be sliced by the teeth on an iron gate. You would dive and surface, a needle sewing your home to his until neither is yours. You would even unbraid the flaxen sheaves of your girlhood at the lip of a continent aching to combust, crumble, and melt. If my throat is an altar, everything I swallow is sacred. Ask me to regret that handful of garnets.
For more from the Summer 2022 issue of MQR, you can purchase the issue here.
Image credit Nicole Thumult
