top of page
  • Writer's picturenotdeermag

Rural Patricide, K. Blair

Updated: May 7, 2021

CW: religious horror, threats of violence, threat of human sacrifice


He takes me to the corn field where the sky is so vast it could swallow you and the corn so high I feel like a child again escorted by my father to a makeshift altar

I’ve always hated my lower back being touched

perfect place to stick a knife

he knows this so his hand hovers

as if his palms will burn if he makes contact

he has spent a lifetime being a hands off parent

a presence at my shoulder that

looms like the approaching Harvest

This morning he told my mother

we’d have to hire more help

a bumper crop is promised

she wept into the frying pan

I won’t be the first to bleed for a farm what is a daughter if not another fertile field?

plant a knife in my breast and watch what I yield

Fathers care about ceremony

it’s the principle of the thing your best white dress an antique knife no one considers the worth of the ram

the value of experience

No one considers the lamb cottoned on pretty quick

had time to plan

had time to meditate on the

best way to get a knife between ribs

strike while the iron’s hot and his back is turned

then follow through with tradition

after all it’s what my father taught me


 

K.Blair (she/they) is a member of London Queer Writers, and is a part-time host of their LGBTQ+ spoken word night, SPEAK =. They have recently been published in Opia, From the Farther Trees, HAD and Wretched Creations magazine. Find her in the wild, on Twitter: @WhattheBlair, and Instagram: @urban_barbarian.

187 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page