Crying Ghazal
Human bodies are mostly made of water, so it’s easy to spend a year crying.
Today the streets are rolling with people & song & drumbeat anger & I’m here, crying.
Yesterday it was a brand-new oak leaf, smaller than a salamander’s egg—one look
at its impossible green and I was kneeling on the dirt path, even my breath near crying.
On almost any day in this dying world: a bud that blossoms, a child that wants to. Have you ever
seen a daffodil in the rain? Have you seen a daffodil? Have you seen a child? Can you hear crying?
Every word for water is the beginning of a prayer. Every prayer is the beginning
of a beginning. Rivers know how to touch without breaking. So does a tear, crying.
I’ve cried in parking lots and greenhouses. On bridges. With my face roughed up and close
against a tree. Among grasses, shoulders, wheels. There’s nothing as sweet as queer crying.
More hands. More salt. More wind. More baskets & more banners. More whispers
& more windows open to the night. More mending. More healers who revere crying.
It will always hurt: that’s the secret that makes it good. Come here. Let me touch your holy
face. Come closer. Let your water season wild. I know who taught us to fear crying.
Circe on the Brink
In the dark, your bowl shines with old-iron softness, glows
like a skeletal ghost trumpeting a flood. How many lifetimes
did you break, longing for a memory shorter than meltwater
in spring? How many snapped twigs did it take? Sometimes
I pretend I’m stitched inside your spells. On swamp-edges, in
mountain-shallows, I gather the simples: black stones, bits of bark,
clouds when I can shred them. I fill what containers I have,
but your bowl is its own fat moon, marked with the clanging
of your teeth and the shreds of lingering rot you
couldn’t cut away, though you tried, slice by slice,
like you were chopping vegetables for soup. If my hair spins gray,
it will be your bowl that graces me there. If I claw myself
out of the muck, it will be with your hawk voice roaring
behind me down the lonely river. Let me have the rest, you say, lifting
the bowl to your lips as if lifting something so weighty is as easy
as swallowing. You built the world I wanted and kept it for yourself.
How many lives did it cost you? Be honest: When you reached
into the watery murk toward that spark of endless pain,
who did you think you were going to save? Circe. We live
by the myths we write and they were all burning long before your father
walked into the sky and lit the match. The name for what I was
did not exist, you said, and laughed, and wrote open the door
to a better story, but you didn’t record the recipe you used
to make the ink. It’s only February and the world has already
ended ten thousand times this week. We haven’t
gotten to the good part yet. Climb the scaffolding and look:
the distance hasn’t changed in a millennia. Circe, it’s past
my bedtime and I’m on my period. I’ve been swiping right for hours.
My hand is cramping. We’re alone out here. I’m asking for the bowl.
Note: The italicized lines are taken from Circe by Madeline Miller.
The Speaker of This Poem
is lonely. She hasn’t had sex
in eleven years. The speaker of this poem
is worried about her mother.
The speaker of this poem is a dog with soft ears
flopped on her side by the fire, snoring.
The speaker of this poem is not the ocean
but she wreathes herself in water as often as she can.
The speaker of this poem is worried that it’s 70 degrees
and raining in January. The speaker of this poem wants
strawberries. She wants everything red
and luscious and dripping
between her teeth. The speaker of this poem
is haunted. She’s a spider plant always
having babies. She’s not adapting
well to being repotted. The speaker
of this poem is not a lesbian
though sometimes she’s a dyke.
The speaker of this poem is worried about cops
in riot gear. She’s worried about what softness
their tearing hands will rend. She is trying
to love summer. She is not a symbol.
The speaker of this poem is a foggy
morning. All cloud, all drops, all
dew. The speaker of this poem might not text you back.
The speaker of this poem is a ghost. She’s considering packing
it in, relocating to one of Jupiter’s moons. She’s heard
Europa is quiet and cold.
The speaker of this poem is not a drill.
The speaker of this poem is a thousand shades
of leaf. The speaker of this poem has secrets she’d like
to give away but she learned how not to speak before
she learned to speak. The speaker of this poem
is worried about everybody’s body. She is not
a girl. The speaker of this poem is blue. Is salt-
marsh. Is swallowing and dirt. She is a broad-winged hawk
eating a mouse. The speaker of this poem is
waking up. She is waiting for you
to open the window and let her in.
