Joan Albin Beauprez

No One Told Her

No one told her she wasn’t going to die
Even as she was screaming with blood running down her leg
“Just stuff rags down your bloomers”
Big sisters laughing

Mother silent
Hanging wet sheets out on the line
Peeing in the garden
Headless chickens scattering away from Sunday dinner plates

No one told her not to get knocked-up at fifteen
Nor did they ever say anything about the red-headed woman

Shock treatments quelled the screaming echoes of finding
The wrist-razor blood pools of her brother

But she still remembered that at age five
Accidentally setting their house on fire
Striking a match in her closet
Because no one told her not to

 

Joan Albin Beauprez, BFA   I am an artist with poems published in Moon Journal, 100 Words, and The Broad View, a Group 22 chapbook. I exhibit Artist Books and paintings, collect family histories, and I am currently keeping a Pandemic Journal for the Illinois State Archives.