Audrey Towns

Disposable Culture

Bluebonnets on membranes of milk
glass and lucite rosettes were fastened to
evenings of middle age.
in younger years, my grandmother baked
bomber noses made from the same skin, folded silken sheets
of metal, and before bed, laid delicate domes in cardboard
cribs or spare spaces on orchestra-level mattresses.
there were no fine brooches at evening dinner,
just jelly bellies filled with empty
depression glass, counterfeit crystal
dreams, like the promise of smoke-heavy skies
sunken beneath tent cities, an opera
of objects directed dirt stages—chairs, ironing boards, flowered linens plucked
from harvested homes, the rest left
behind, like crops rotted in the field, thirsty
for the privilege of ritual—no staircase to the mezzanine
of memories, no silver candlestick
light glinting off the memory just surfaced
in the river. shanty tourists sightseeing
suffering without seeing, their grandfather’s pearl cufflinks, their mother’s dainty cameo
borrowed from the warmth, nests undisturbed, safe
in traditions, applauding their own accord after the show—beneath
torn-up boards, tacks, tar, glass, cardboard roofs,
and distant sympathies, they flung silver at her sodden
soles and called them hoover shoes—there was something
in the river—small spheres of sapphire
plastic, cast-off stone, cracked bricks,
a forgotten gulch of stirred memories,
drained and desolate for years, then refilled
all at once—come quick, something’s in the river—voice gasping, aged
with remembering, the thin curtain pulled back, wet winds
whipping through the last of the family
photos, a bangle, a brooch, a baby
pin planted in the rubble,
something for next season’s harvest of homes—something
in the river—her frail finger stretched forward pointing at what surfaced—
polished, lightweight, and easy to wear,
garish, bloated, disposable,
there in the river.

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Audrey Towns, a literature and composition instructor in the heart of Fort Worth, Texas, dismantles the nature/culture binary in her prose and verse. New materialism her muse, landscapes her canvas, and the connection between the human and nonhuman her essence.

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