Melissa Wabnitz Pumayugra

Melissa Wabnitz Pumayugra is a Texas-based professor, writer, mother and Girl Scout leader. She spends the majority of her evenings grading student papers and feeding scraps to neighborhood possums. You can check out her work via twitter (mel_the_puma) Emergent Lit, Emerson Review,Roi Faineant Press,Hobart Pulp, as well as in print publications throughout the globe.

Jewel

The books weren’t burned. 

No, they were hoarded, arranged,

boxed up—particles of of red clay, words,

pages, knowledge known and dismissed. 

My grandmother, Jewel Frances.

Native by blood, white by census,

trinkets in a truck stop, settled. 

Her voice? Can’t recall, never heard.

How to know the past when

all you have is silenced, tempered, 

witnessed—from the stranger’s 

hand-me-down history tale. 

Auction

I’ve decided to invest in art, I found my mouth speaking.

I was at a party, cold air and warm cheeks, 

The wine already working us over.  

I want to buy a Joan Miro sculpture, or maybe just a picture,

Of a sculpture, or a picture of something fancy,

Exciting, pretty or lightly abstract, Maybe? 

Or maybe I just want to collect Joan Didion articles,

Something that she wrote, weird or obscure, I can’t stand the lilt

Of a rich lady remembering things my Okie mitts can’t touch. 

East Coast, I bet. Each artist from another place

I may have gone to once, before the child was born

And when two incomes fed one address.  

Please, my friend gently argued, tossing her hair

Back over the shoulder, the one I leaned upon for support,

Advice, and mutual commiseration.  

The only art we can afford these days

is the kind we make ourselves, she said. 

And your hands are too busy holding in tears.  

I didn’t expect to find my heart smeared so far,

Or my words taken and printed and shared

Out of context and scenarios, I am wounded. 

I just need something to put on the wall, or my desk,

To remind me to keep living, breathing, trying, 

a little piece of wire, cage of my broken heart. 

Or is it a cubist lullabye? I need hope, love.  

A splash of bold color to hold me together, 

Or frame up my feelings, shadowboxed.