A How-To
To separate soul from body, stand with your back towards the sun
until it casts itself across the ground.
Then, you can walk around with it—
Or, perhaps, climb high on rusty fences in July when it burns hot
and the cattle fade into one another in open fields.
Or, take it window shopping from the seat of a bicycle being
careful to avoid the subway;
remembering that hat-wearing days are soul-parting days
when one can drive West at dawn
with the left arm stretched out of the window until fingertips brush asphalt.
This is good practice for the lonely,
for hand puppets,
and for heaven.
This is much easier than peeling flesh to detach the soul.
It never goes well—
You have to use a knife.
It’s messy.
The Wailing of Maureen
She met the walls, she met the floors, and windows in between.
She met the sounds in hallowed halls—
The wailing of Maureen.
A staircase led beyond the known, she climbed so she could see,
the doors blown wide, the smokestack gone—
The wailing of Maureen.
She smelled the stench of memories, she smelled the lasting dread,
the taste of birth upon her tongue—
The wailing of Maureen.
A gable stretched into the sky, one step then liberty.
Unremembered but for her mother’s womb—
Oh, the wailing of Maureen!
Krysta Mayfield was born in Texas, and spent her childhood on the plains of North Dakota and in the woods of Virginia. She attended college in Lynchburg, Virginia, and is currently an undergraduate studying English Literature at the University of Texas Permian Basin. She writes both poetry and fiction. Ms. Mayfield currently lives in West Texas.
