Sarah Hilton writes from the traditional territories of the Haudenoshaunee, the Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Her work has been featured in several print and online journals, including Best Canadian Poetry, Canthius, and Augur. She is the author of the chapbook Saltwater Lacuna (Anstruther Press) and the digital chapbook homecoming (MODEL Press). She works as a librarian.
“‘Death Walk’ is a prose poem in which I converse with Io, the figure in Greek mythology as mentioned in The Metamorphoses of Ovid (trans. Allen Mandelbaum, 1993). In her story, Io was raped by Zeus and later transformed into a heifer in order for Zeus to avoid repercussion from his wife, Hera. I connected very closely with the myth of Io after a particularly harmful relationship. I was changed and harmed, and I could not find the words to speak on it. I thought often of Io, who had just experienced something unspeakable but was so changed she physically could not talk about what happened. I am trying to free myself, and her, in this poem. I am speaking on a kinship between women that transcends myth versus reality.”
“I wrote ‘Self-Portrait as Leda’ as a persona poem from the perspective of Leda, the figure in Greek mythology who was raped by Zeus in the form of a swan (The Metamorphoses of Ovid, trans. Allen Mandelbaum, 1993). I wanted to examine Leda’s internal monologue after the swan’s departure, to see how she would speak her peace, her vengeance, for what happened to her.”
“Sharon Olds was the first one to write a poem (“Saturn,” published in The Gold Cell, 1987) inspired by Francisco Goya’s painting Saturn Devouring His Son (1819 – 1823) about how her father tore her apart. I felt compelled to speak on my own childhood through the lens of this painting.”
This summer I decided to go free. I took the road southeast and found my body buried among the reeds. And what can the earth tell me that I don’t already know. What can the water. Io, a field is a place where you surrender the body. I’ve been trying to undo something like a hand latched at the throat. To cry out. To understand why love must dislodge. It’s gone on long enough now—
You must attach the name to what he’s done to you. For days I walked silent. My body rendered pastoral. It didn’t matter how deep I went, when I tried to tell my story my throat was mangled raw. Imagine a rag wrung dry. I considered symptoms of grief, a body untouched. I take the burrs, the bruises; sink them like stones to a lake. Rid myself of the evidence as I always have. I could not have run back even if I wanted. I didn’t have a voice left
to call him. I saw the doctors. I quit my job. Life moved like a series of omens. There’s the blood in the toilet; swollen breasts; the hide of an animal over my head—a plastic bag. When did I remember it—that despite language, all women can scream; drown out the wind; ripple on water; his voice saying, If you loved me you would let me inside.
Io, let me pull you from the heifer. The field is undone and our bodies are waiting. Do you remember how your tongue at one time caressed your name. The earth is waiting to be cradled in our fists and this time our hands will remain our hands. Look again—I am reaching for you. Meanwhile, the flowers bend to our feet. The moon is bare bone. The cicadas come in droves, shedding their skin at our feet, insisting our womanhood upon us.
I lay myself down in the grass
each night after I met you.
And how long did it take before
I finally birthed the moon—an egg.
This year I surrendered to the body.
To yours, to mine. I lay
in goddess pose every night.
Womb-faced. I wait
to watch it crack. To see how
this love will bleed, clot the sky.
In bed, you beg, you won’t
know if you don’t try. At this age
I find myself vulnerable as
a plucked bird in your hands. I poise
myself for offerings. Yes,
even a feather will leave
a bruise inside the thigh.
Nape of the neck.
I have known you a week. Confronted
with the facts you call it falling fast,
call it exposure. I could have
collapsed myself face first to a body
of water but truthfully,
I’m still waiting to prove your hands
are your hands. I learned from
a teacher, patience is not violent
enough. You can remove
a bruise with your own fingers, break
open the skin above the clot and pull.
Little heart in your palm.
How deep do I need to go for
the feathers to give way. Until
the swan departs in a sky
stained with birth. Bare face
against the heat of the wounds
you bore me. Crack.
There was what happened to me and what people said
they saw. How it was love that left me
with fingers missing. That my father’s mouth was
only a mouth. And when my sister
walked the house headless,
it was her fault for waking his body.
Stone fruit in his jaw.
Days would go by
where I breathed
despite my ribcage. In my dreams,
there came the recurring image of a hook
through a nape. He sucked his fingers
clean. The proof of me
collecting as plaque between his teeth.
His mouth shaped
the word for love but all I heard
was the grind of bone. I knew
it was love by how much was left of me.
I knew it was love and I stained
myself across the bathroom tile.
The kitchen floor.
Can you ever call it home
if you’ve never yelled fire?
We rolled in his stomach
for the length of a childhood
but we always came back up
for air. I came back fluid-blind.
I tried outrunning my body but
every door was an open throat. Night
beginning at every new mouth.
These days, we meet only over dinner. It takes him
three hours to swallow. We pick away at conversation as
he slices fat from bone. I sit on my hands. I cross
my ankles. Is this not what all fathers teach
their daughters? That your life is only
your life because at one time he opened his mouth?
