Two Poems By Ellen Orr

Classification 

That sherbet in its cardboard sleeve
faux citrus, milky, sweet, and sharply 
tart—it stabs my jowls. (My mouth

is watering even now.) With care
I push the straw-like stem
for more Yabba Dabba Doo 

Orange frozen treat. Loose curls glued
to my chin and cheek. Fred’s face 
is muddied, too, with backyard dirt 

and pylon melt. A baby wipe across 
my sticky maw; the powdery scent 
of innocence. It blends 

with kid-sweat smell, that earthy funk
of dampness, snot, and grime. Fight
the urge to bathe away the parts of me 

that stink—bacteria, viruses, literal bugs. 
I am more microbe than human child. 
Less purposeful than driven

wild. Belly-down in Bermudagrass, I dump 
my footlong tube of creatures. Am I
sorting the plastic toys—hard shells, 

big wings, stingers, singers, hoppers, swimmers?
Taxonomist, trying to smart my way
to joy? No. I knew better then—intelligence 

is not enough. My body does not know
the difference between romance and rest—

the rest of it. I only know that salmon are laid, lay, 
and lie upstream, a place they know by smell. 

Coming of Age

When she says she cannot hold 
you anymore, your adult body (bless
 
it) will react, retract into a child too old 
for a mother’s breast, 

disgusted by her milk, ashamed 
that you crave it still (but your belly 

is rumbling). Your pain 
is too much, those measured words an elegy. 

Now you’re sixteen again (not again). 
You know how to shrink. Your rest 

ordained by hunger pangs. 
You need nothing, eat nothing, a fast 

and a plea: ne me quitte pas. But she walks away, 
leaves you newborn: a mass 

of screaming nerves, your skin inflamed, sins exposé,
undeniably (you’re okay) too vast. 

Ellen Orr is a writer, editor, and teacher based in Texarkana, Texas. She holds a bachelor’s in English from Centenary College of Louisiana and a master’s in education from the University of Toronto. Her poetry has been published in the Amethyst Review, BarBar Literary Magazine, and Moss Piglet.