Whitney Vale

​Ode To My Black Slip

You growl from the back of the closet, rarely let out to roam, black panther skin, hugging hips on the prowl. Your black orchid scent hints at secrets, how once upon a time we danced, Aznavour crooning “Yesterday.” My body, a magic wand, you the shadowy incantation. O undergarment, petticoat, nylon Delilah! I raise my arms and your ink glides over my shoulders, sliding over breasts, easing over my waist, sloping over my buttocks, grazing just below my knees. I’m Anna Magnani in The Fugitive Kind standing in front of an ironing board. I’m a courtesan, an oracle, a goddess. I am a Supreme Court Justice in her sable authority, each fold in the material an article of truth. O charmeuse muse, I fold you in my arms walk into the almond fragrance of the wardrobe, dip you over a padded hanger and slip your form upon a rod, until the next time.
 
**

Excavations at La Brea Tar Pits

“Brea” is tar in Spanish, so I pace around the tar tar pits drinking water from a plastic bottle, take a few pictures of replicated animals caught in the malodorous pitch while the cerulean sky keeps on being untouchable. An active excavation is in process, ferreting out small mammals; memories bone deep, loss that fills the buckets tied to long ropes.
 
I meander the air-conditioned museum as young children peel off layers of their own short histories, a back pack spills out a comb laced with blonde hair, a notebook scrawled in pencil and dog-eared, a couple of copper coins hit the silence startling the mammoth skeleton, one can almost hear the blare of its condemnation: quiet, science at work.
 
Discovery: an American lion hunted here 36,000 years ago. He padded to the pits snatched at tiny limbs, which double doomed, cried black tears. Colored lines mark out the times of extinction for a variety of animals and I look for 2017 and Homo sapiens. 
 
A long wall contains 400 hundred dire wolf skulls. The Stark family roams through my mind with their long winter. Slowly seeping in and bubbling up, an image of an old lover hovers in the empty socket of a wolf. Memories can hunt you down.
 
I return to the park following the tracks of love, my own time line, to where we picnicked 30 years ago. We held hands as the baby mammoth stepped asphalt mire. He continues to step in; I continue to step in, the asphalt puckers, sputters.
 
A friend and I drove through Laurel Canyon where I hear echoes of Joni Mitchell calling the ladies and their cats. Back at my rental I listen to a hypnosis tape for anxiety.
 
Worried that I have not paid diligent attention in this forensic study of my frayed mind, I drift to sleep visualizing a fossilized Monterey cypress, green fingers splayed in black pools. 
 
**
 
Urban Coyote
 
A coyote stalked us in an urban park. One dog strained against his lead, tugging backwards. I turned and saw a slouching shadow; sunrise braised its tail in yellow sparks. Too surprised for fear, I said, scoot--its hunched form faded into a tumbled mesquite. A fragment of myth chanted through my mind with Dine lore: how Coyote flings a bag of beans into the night sky forming the Milky Way, scattering patterns; a thick stew of celestial whey. Loitering, loath to return to domesticity, tangled in story and leash, I jumbled songs into rhyme— thrilled to be followed by this old magic, the deep-down muscle of raw hunger. Nerves awakened; I stumbled across my desire to be free. What could carry me off? A hot air balloon glided into view, straight from Oz. I almost let go of the dogs, followed instinct, became outlaw. Had my feet morphed into paws? I sniffed the air, wild fancies drifted like cottonwood fiber. The balloon sailed on into clouds massing the horizon. The green buzz around me faded. One dog whined and tamed my nomadic instinct. The caliche underfoot sparkled with mica. I headed home at last, quiet as coyote, quiet as death slips through the orbit of stars.
 
**

A Bloodstone’s Story Regarding the Burial of a Cat

(Ground soft from drenching monsoon, I dig out dirt and place a bloodstone down beneath a white sparked sky. I cry. Set near the black body of our cat. I imagine the bloodstone dissolves into greens that surround this grave.)

Before you buried me you clutched me in your pale palm, stroking my dark moss colour with its red streak veining through the mound of me. I felt your desire to press me through your body bone to your heart.

Cat’s heart pierced by the vet’s needle, one gentle prick and gone. Cat tells me he would have died that night anyway. Cat felt your fear, forgives you, and forgives the car, the white coats, the needle, the pillowcase.

The night is long. I feel the weight of grief beneath the orange trees ready to bloom. I feel the weight of tree roots as they creep.

The dawn comes. Your hand scoops away mud. You hold me in your muddy palm and wash me. I struggle to recover the dreams of mineral and the dreams of cat. You hold me up to your ear to listen. I’m earth, put me in your mouth and swallow me.
 
**

Whitney Vale MFA Creative Non Fiction Ashland University. Poetry has appeared in Anti Heroin Chic, Rogue Agent, Crab Creek Review, Thimble Literary Arts, RockPaperPoem and others. A chapbook to be released in 2026 by Gnashing Teeth Press. Prose includes Black Fork Review and Lit Angels.