Borrowed Horses: This morning I made a rib cage by accident

Sunday, January 2, 2011

This morning I made a rib cage by accident

I stuffed it with apples and sprinkled it with sugar and fed it to my children. This is not disturbing. The knife through the pastry, the cracking of sugar crust: this is what feeds, what creates. A rib cage for a rib cage. A breath for a breath.

The accident was remembering. While my head thought "breakfast," my hands thought "pulmonary" and brought me aware.

There are things the body knows. Sweetness, for example, which exists only where tongues can recognize it. And now, mindlessly folding and slashing pastry, my hands surprise me not at the moment of creation but after, when I pull open the oven and slide it, piping hot, to board.

As I looked, the steam lifting through vents kissed my cheek. It is no dark thing to build a ribcage for breakfast.

2 comments:

branditJanuary 10, 2011 at 1:45 AM
It looks like a tasty ribcage.
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Sian GriffithsJanuary 12, 2011 at 9:24 PM
It was!
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Sian Griffiths

Siân Griffiths lives in Ogden, Utah where she serves as assistant professor of English at Weber State University. Her work is published in Quarterly West, Ninth Letter, Cave Wall, River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, Clackamas Literary Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Permafrost, Versal, Court Green, and The Georgia Review, among other publications. Her story “What Is Solid” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and Janet Burroway included her poem, “Fistful,” in the third edition of Imaginative Writing. Siân's debut novel, BORROWED HORSES, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in October 2013.

Publications

"Dislocated" (essay), MARY, http://maryajournalofnewwriting.wordpress.com/nonfiction/sian-b-griffiths/
"Pearls" (short story), Waccamaw. http://www.waccamawjournal.com/pages.html?x=358
"The Chicago Art Institute: A Guided Tour" (poem), Timber [forthcoming]
"Fistful," "Persistence of Geese," and "Proud Flesh" (poems—anthology reprints), The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. V: Georgia, Ed. William Wright.Huntsville, TX: Texas Review Press [Forthcoming]
“Fistful” (poem—anthology reprint), Imaginative Writing 3rd ed., Ed. Janet Burroway. New York: Penguin, 2010: 81.
“The Love of Reindeer” (poem), Versal 8 (2010): 6.
“Book Brief” on Dan Albergotti’s The Boatloads (book review), The Georgia Review 63.4 (Winter 2009): 722.
“My daughter, four, confronts an autumn window and all its contradictions” (poem), Literary Mama. http://www.literarymama.com/poetry/archives/2009/07/my-daughter-four.html
“Proud Flesh” (poem), Cave Wall 6 (Summer/Fall 2009): 44-45.
“Bread” (essay), Oregon Literary Review. http://orelitrev.startlogic.com/v4n2/OLR-griffiths.htm
"Two Mermaids” (poem), The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review (Winter 2009): 8.
“Persistence of Geese” (poem), Permafrost (Spring 2008): 42-3.
“Coming Home” (excerpt from Borrowed Horses, a novel), Mangrove Review (Spring 2008).
“What Is Solid.” (short story), Versal 5 (2007): 77. [Pushcart Nominee]
“Fistful” (poem), Ninth Letter 4.2 (Fall/Winter 2007): 45.
“Building Tall” (short story), Clackamas Literary Review 11 (2007):114.
“Dissolving Pearls: Charlotte Brontë’s Textual Hieroglyphs” (scholarly article), Women’s Writing 14 (2007): 49-69.
“Paper Hats” (short story), Quarterly West 62.1 (Spring/Summer 2006): 85.
“Book Brief” on Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost (book review), The Georgia Review 60.1 (Spring 2006): 256-57.
“Somewhere in the Sawtooths. June.” (poem), Court Green 3 (2006): 97.
“Book Brief” on Dennis Covington’s Redneck Riviera: Armadillos, Outlaws, and the Demise of an American Dream (book review), The Georgia Review 59.3 (Fall 2005): 730-31.
“Why I’m Not Pretty” (memoir), The River Oak Review 2.1 (Fall 2004): 26-33.
“What the Scorpions Know” (personal essay), Riverteeth, a Journal of Nonfiction Narrative 5.2 (Spring 2004): 75-76.

Borrowed Horses

Sunday, January 2, 2011

This morning I made a rib cage by accident

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