For Mary Hawsley Sullivan Howard, fourth-great-grandmother (1841-1890)
Mary did not die falling
into that tavern well, she was reborn.
Swirling in amniotic fluid,
floating in pure grain alcohol, she was calm.
Her head, often full of fear, dark thoughts
crawling from her mind’s hidden rooms,
grew clear as the train whistle
that blurred out the birdsong near
the tin and tar paper shack she called home.
Still, she drifted down
into the deep black, hair rippling like shadows
cast upon the water, seaweed floating at the shore’s lip.
Water so quiet and flat
she could hear her big heart beating,
see her cuts and bruises wash away.
Feel the cold wet on her legs
which were joining together, melting and fusing
as lower limbs turn to fin, feet
sprout silvery scales, lips
crack to coral, eyes reflect
the many colors of the sea:
Go reclaim your red cap, Mary
and haunt us with an old song,
your voice like pennies dropped
in sunken wells, wishes left ungranted.
Click here to read Marceline White on the origin of the poem.
Image by Kenneth Surillo on pexels.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
Marceline White:
Merrow is from a current manuscript I am working on that traces ancestral inheritance, epigenetics, and dysfunction through my matrilineal line from the 1850s to now, using a mix of archival materials, news articles, and more. Merrow is inspired by the death of my fourth great-grandmother, who died falling into a well behind a tavern, according to news articles of the incident. It remains unclear whether it was an accident or suicide. While grappling with this topic, I was fortunate to take a one-day workshop with Sarah Moore Wagner, where we worked with the role of magical realism in poems. I already desired an outcome for Mary Howard that allowed magic into her difficult life – if not in the living of it, then at least in her death. I have written of sirens in other poems, and the idea of sirens, selkies, and other creatures who live doubled-lives speaks to me when thinking of women’s daily chores versus their interiority. The Irish myths of the merrow are ones she would have known and the ending of the poem simply wanted to be what it was. When that happens, I try to listen and honor what the poem wants to be.
Marceline White is a Baltimore-based writer and activist whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in SWWIM, The Ekphrastic Review, trampset, yolk, Prime Number, The Orchard Review, The Indianapolis Review, Atticus Review, and others. She has received fellowships from Aspen Words, Key West Literary Seminar, and an AWP Writer to Writer mentorship. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, when not writing, Marceline can be found serving her two cats and telling her son to text her when he arrives at the EDM show. Read more at www.marcelinewhitewrites.com.
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