Esther Mazakian - Poetry

The Rubber: Age 8

by Esther Mazakian

Every night she grasped his suede shoebrush he left behind,
but the other way round. The soil-
stained, two-sided brush
---steel-bristled on one side, knobbed on
the other---
was what she held on to, what prickled the inside of her
hand, while the flat brown plastic end,
shaped like nothing more than an easy-to-squeeze
handle, or a teardrop,
is what she used. That lightweight, silent, functional hold,
engraved with the golden word Tana
entered her at night and before long began to take on
the odour of the plastic used to make cheap barbies.
The ones she'd hold to her nose and inhale,
a child under the covers,
because they smelled to her like cherry gum.
Dolls her brother used to dare her to catch from him,
waving it over her head like candy; yes,
yes, cool flossy hair tickling her eyelashes,
shucked off blonde trichome sprouting from the head she'd roll later
in the palm of her hand, a born lone driver
shifting gears. So even at age eight
she knew where to find them
---the masters who manufacture man-made materials
for bait---
and how to inveigle what she needed from what they handed down.
Legs long, smooth, pliable substitutes,
stood her hair up on end,
flamed her cheeks, rubbed her by proxy,
procuring love and marriage in strokes
for and against the grain
of her napped flesh,
the soft suede inside that had him coming back
to her every night in waves, back and forth, to and fro, in and out, in

Esther Mazakian: I'm working on a book of poems, tentatively entitled, All the Lifters. I've been published in The Malahat Review, Fiddlehead, Tickleace, The Antigonish Review, ink, Queen Street Quarterly, The Pottersfield Portfolio, and several others.