turtles

by Sara Atwater

I have never been to hell.  

If it does exist, it looks like the cemetery where

my parents are buried. 

Shallow graves in a swampy plot

feet apart from each other.

Oh god, did my mother protest once she

remembered that she had pre-paid eternal rest next to him.  

And the turtles. God the turtles. They swim to the corner

of the pond to greet me when I near the soggy grave markers

covered in goose shit under which my parents decompose.

A turn of snapping turtles

that migrated from the Congaree Swamp to the interstate.

The ones that survived this resettlement

found the bog-pond in the driveway,

die-way cemetery where they now watch my every move,

bobbing up and down.

Someone clearly unfamiliar with the wetlands

thought a little pond would add a spiritual touch

to this otherwise profane deathscape.

A doorway to hell, I think, as I slap off another dozen oversized mosquitoes

who don’t give a fuck about the 100 percent DEET repellent

I’ve applied in ferocious squirts.

We are all going to die, sure, but most of us will not end up next to the interstate, our ephemerality reflected in the glow of the golden arches, next to a portal to the underworld guarded by nosey, bored turtles.

I make eye contact with one – its snout points towards a

pinkening sky. Neither of us find sense in this moment,

seeing our future reflected in the pond’s darkening light.

Photo of Sara Atwater

BIO: Sara Atwater lives and writes in Brussels, Belgium. Her poems and short fiction have been published in the Delmarva Review, The Argyle Literary Magazine, Sundial Magazine, Writer's Block Magazine and Allium: A Journal of Poetry and Prose (forthcoming). She is currently working on an ethnographic PhD looking at women’s cabaret in Germany. An excerpt of her study looking at how female cabaret performers counter right-wing narratives was recently published in the academic journal ‘Comedy Studies’.