grandmother as Scylla

What’s worse, after all, than a hungry woman, greedy for all that isn’t meant to be hers?
-Catherine Chung

growing old is erasure—my body
hidden this face unseen
while my girl-days flick
incandescent

memories—lilies & underfoot
moss dusk or dawn swims.
I was seal then or otter
almost fish—

my gift for transmutation
for echolocation only a flicker.
my song could not
be stanched

until misshapen by monstrous
craving for whatever
I could swallow strange
& lush salt & shadow

I transformed.
now when I say monstrous
I mean denial. I mean
grandmother

as nothing. I mean bleating
Mém Maa as if to show that girl
everything
she won’t see

until like me she pretends
to outgrow hunger. Mém
Mémère the mouth
murmurs for more.

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Jeri Theriault’s poetry collections include Radost, My Red and the award-winning In the Museum of Surrender. She is the editor of Wait: Poems from the Pandemic. Her poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as The Rumpus, The Texas Review, The Asheville Poetry Review, and Plume. A Fulbright recipient and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Jeri won the 2019 Maine Literary Award for poetry. She lives in South Portland, Maine. www.jeritheriault.com