The Mercy of Mud

Mom, tell me again about the time
Grandpa backed up the car
on his way to work, barely paused

when he felt the rear left tire
go bump
before he heard Grandma’s

scream
trapped behind window glass and your
wail. Tell me

again of the mercy
of mud, how you had
toddled to the car, to your dad, then

fell, how the
melon of your
skull sank

into rain-
softened earth as
rubber drove your head

down. How he ran to snatch
welter of shock,
wipe muck from feather

hair, cradle whimper and wrack.
Tell me how
after, you were never the same,

how those we love
crush
our most vulnerable

parts, press them to
terror,
how some wounds

are too intricate to heal.


Dayna Patterson Contributor
Dayna Patterson is a consulting editor for Bellingham Review, poetry editor for Exponent II Magazine, and founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre. She is a co-editor (with Tyler Chadwick and Martin Pulido) of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry (Peculiar Pages Press 2018). Her poetry has appeared recently in Hotel Amerika, Sugar House Review, Western Humanities Review, and Zone 3, among others.

1 Comment

  1. Love this. Classic style and a theme that is at once modern and timeless. I especially love “How he ran to snatch the welter of shock.” This snippet is the type of phrasing poets like myself only aspire to.

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