Guilty August
by Sam Moe
Summer house, seashells, the mothers gather in their circle, discuss what to do with the daughters, but why talk on the haziest day of August, they wonder about fuss and whether the daughters left the house wearing shoes, some of the mothers are very hungry, some are making little cuts through the air, their hands like knives, they are slicing invisible ribeye steaks for the daughters who have all gone down to the river to play a game called who-gets-to-drown-today, they are reading stories about daughters, tightly bonded, white-knuckling their summers until school starts again and all the sons return from the shore, the sons who barely know the difference between crabs and lobsters, couldn’t tell you a claw from an acorn an ache from the empty stomach of a gutted tree, no matter the sons are gone today and the fathers were never there to begin with. Everything is sweet and green, everything is daughters, the mothers can be heard laughing over hills and their laughter forms a bond between the offspring, they decide no one will drown today, they lay their bodies in the river, there are no wolves to eat them, no sharp hooves their dresses inflate with water, their lighters float downstream everything is a dream, they promise to forgive each other, they make small crowns out of river rocks, laugh about how the water isn’t salty, nothing like the water for sons and fathers, the sea full of scales and household items and the promise of death, the daughters are making water angels, though they will never become holy or strong enough.
Sam Moe has received residencies from VCCA and Château d’Orquevaux. She is the recipient of a 2023 St. Joe Community Foundation Poetry Fellowship from Longleaf Writers Conference. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Peatsmoke Journal, The Indianapolis Review, Sundog Lit, and others. Her first full-length collection, Heart Weeds, was published with Alien Buddha Press (Sept. ’22) and her second full-length collection Grief Birds was published with Bullshit Lit (Apr. ’23). Her third full-length Cicatrizing the Daughters is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press.