LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE celebrates Malaika King Albrecht as Poet of The Month in this her birth month.
Malaika King Albrecht’s chapbook Lessons in Forgetting was published by Main Street Rag and was a finalist in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and received honorable mention in the Brockman Campbell Award. Her newest book Spill was also published by Main Street Rag.
Her poems have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies and have recently won awards at the North Carolina Poetry Council, Salem College and Press 53.
She lives in Pinehurst, N.C. with her family and is a therapeutic riding instructor.
3 poems from Lessons in Forgetting
Published in Fieralingue
Book can be ordered here
My Father Teaching my Eldest Daughter
Fill the basin with about three inches
of warm water and add a dash of baby oil.
Begin with her eyes. With a cotton ball,
start at the inside corner of one eye
and wipe outward. Do this to both eyes,
and then gently wash the rest of her face.
Make sure to get behind her ears,
drool and spit-up tend to collect back there.
He stops talking. My daughter’s hands caress
my mother’s forehead, which relaxes.
Mom opens her eyes and looks at them.
Her wet face beautiful in my daughter’s hands.
The Riddle Song
Grocery bags in my arms,
I hip the front door open
and hear my father singing
to my mother,
I gave my love a cherry
that had no stone.
He stretches out her right leg
and then slowly rotates it in circles.
She hasn’t walked in three years
or gotten out of bed in two.
I gave my love a baby
with no crying.
with no crying.
Her legs resist, the muscles
tight as fists. He massages
the leg nearly straight, moves
to the next one still singing.
A baby when it's sleeping
it's not crying.
it's not crying.
The story of how I love you
it has no end.
it has no end.
Of course I’m crying
in the kitchen doorway.
I can’t see her eyes from here,
but I’m hoping that their open
that she’s awake
looking directly into his eyes.
He moves to her left arm,
tucked beside her body
like a broken wing,
and gently spreads it out.
published in Wild Goose Review
How to Stay Afloat
This morning, he’s gone when we wake up.
Amani says, Where’s Pop Pop?
Did he go to get biscuits?
I walk outside, and his car’s there,
and in the driveway,
the empty canoe stand.
He’s been threatening
to lug that old dugout canoe
into Cat Point Creek and paddle
to the small island in Menokin Bay.
On the pier I stand in the morning fog
and cold drizzle and scan the water
for movement. Nothing.
Then I hear him whistling a song.
I step to the edge of the dock
and see him. Floating with the outgoing tide
towards home, he’s kneeling
in the canoe, bailing with a kitchen pot.
On all sides, water breaches
the canoe gunnels. He sees me
and yells, See. She still floats.
published in Lessons in Forgetting Book
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