Two Poems by Morrow Dowdle

I Decline the Order of Protection

I knew I had landed in Oregon because the airport speakers
were playing 80s goth rock and there were lots of people dressed
like skater punks or lumberjacks retrieving their luggage.
And the bathroom was all-gender, white and bright-lit
as a futuristic chapel, each stall with a door fully flush
with the floor. I stepped up to the bank of sinks
beside a buttoned-up cop. I admit I’m still scared of men
sometimes, and my mother-in-law’s crime dramas don’t help.
But not there, the officer and I just trying to eliminate
our bodies’ waste. He wasn’t pretending to be a man—
he was a man. Nor was the woman in the church bathroom
back home pretending to be a woman. Nor was she afraid
to wear a leather jacket and skirt to the service—that requires
real courage. She was taking her two little girls to pee,
each whining on the toilet. I was washing my son’s hands
as he resisted the soap. The woman and her kids came out,
and she and I rolled our eyes at each other, no longer
strangers as we sympathized about how our children
drive us nuts. She was just any other mother except
for the small lump at her throat that can never go away.
As if she carries some small sadness. And goes on anyway.

*

And Then, We Hear It

That is, I hear it, and then
she enters my bedroom.
Face stricken.

I heard it, she says. Something
booming. I don’t correct her,
don’t say shooting.

The book of essays stays
open on my lap. I’m reading
the scholar’s message

to the would-be confessional poet.
Their recommendation? Your verse
should be more gospel

than gossip. The only hymn
at present a ringing in my ears.
Aren’t you scared?

she asks. I tell again the saddest
lie—No, I reply. I cut her
loose in her fear, make

my face maddeningly flat.
And what could I say about
the stray bullet that found me

in Chicago. Or the ones
that fly by no accident
into a brother’s or sister’s

chest or head. Men do kill,
whether it’s bird or deer
or a queer who’s been known

to hold a red card, sitting
out here in the country
with my daughter,

where the KKK still lurks
in corners. Then there’s
the adrenaline of executive
orders, the line not far
from Klan to militia.
It’s probably someone

hammering, she says.
Yes, I say. I like that
explanation. I like us

to think that someone’s
out there in the dark
on a silver ladder, nails

sprouting from their mouth.
So eager to build a house
they could not wait for morning.

*

Morrow Dowdle is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the micro-chapbook Hardly (Bottlecap Press, 2024). Their work can be found in New York Quarterly, The Baltimore Review, Pedestal Magazine, and other publications. They run a performance series which features BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ voices. They are an MFA candidate at Pacific University and live in Durham, NC.