sea foam mag
  • home
  • about
  • read
    • online journal
    • print issues
  • connect
    • submit
    • support
    • contact
  • store
  • home
  • about
  • read
    • online journal
    • print issues
  • connect
    • submit
    • support
    • contact
  • store

hiraeth by jessica clem

11/5/2018

 
Here, we laid to rest the bones
Of my grandmother’s house
In the country dirt
Velvety with worms.

As we light the wooden foundation,
I realize
​In the blink of an adult eye,
A year disappears.
That’s why as children,
We can’t understand the value
Of staring contests.

Fighting the humidity
The fire climbs eagerly
Pulling itself along the peeling roof with blue-tipped fingers
Hungry for asbestos
Watching below, I remember:

Coffee, splashed with milk
Armed to the teeth with sugar
Marching across my mouth at the breakfast table
While she fanned a grease fire
Toward the open screen door.

Later, while searching for soda pop
In the back of the dusty pantry,
My cousins and I shrieked
Over the gams of a passing daddy long-leg.

Her nearby barn had a steeple
On top, a cloudy glass ball
She said it wards off lightning, 
But I know the truth.
There is magic in this place.

As the flames engulf the porch,
I can hear screams inside
The living room several Christmases ago
Tearing of wrapping paper, siren-bright.
Bodies everywhere
Flopped across pillows, swollen with ham and potatoes.

Now the house dissolves like a sandcastle,
On the beach of this bucolic landscape
As the moonless tide of prairie grasses
Sweeps it out to sea.

Here, we laid to rest the bones
Of my grandmother’s house
But in restless peace I find longing,
An ache for a home where magic from the sky
​Finds new passage underground.

Picture
Jessica Clem is a writer based in Minneapolis, MN. She holds a B.A. in English and a M.S. in Urban Studies, and works as a content strategist for a marketing agency. In her free time she can be found hogging all the good books at the library, running the local trails, and speed reading horror stories. Speaking of horror stories, you can read her bloody wonderful story, "Slits," in the horror anthology Down with the Fallen from Franklin/Kerr Press. 
    Picture

    Archives

    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016

    Categories

    All
    Ceramics
    Collage
    Design
    Essays
    Events
    Fashion
    Flash
    Hobbies
    Illustration
    Interviews
    Multimedia
    Music
    Nature
    Photography
    Poetry
    Publications & Resources
    Reviews
    Tweets
    Visual Art

facebook
instagram
​twitter