A Golden Shovel poem after T.S. Eliot

The real question: will I ever let

my art speak the unfettered truth about us?

We became some mutation of ourselves. I wanted to go

be a dragon in a Monet, but then

you turned yourself into a waterlily and oh, the joy in you!

Meanwhile, my fire ravaged everything. And I

razed the landscape when

I exhaled. That power! The evening

grew exceptionally grim when I undragoned; it is

darker still, at dragon. Mistrust spread

upon a platter between us. Turns out

you’re a martyr: your body a shield heaved against

my uproar. Oh, Mother, I only wanted to be in the sky.

And snag—as if I’d won something special—any debris twining like

riotous fire. You were always a patient

curator: confident I could best the tempest. Etherized,

you now lie dull. You freed me to be a dragon. I dragged you away upon

a pyre. Mother, forgive my catastrophe. I only meant that table to be a table.

Michelle McMillan-Holifield, Southern American poet, also pens short fiction, creative non-fiction, and occasional book reviews. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, semi-finalist in The MacGuffin’s 29th Annual Poet Hunt, and was longlisted for the Dzanc Poetry Prize. You can find her work in Bear Review, Nelle, Permafrost, Stirring, The Main Street Rag, and Whale Road Review, among others.