FERAL POPPIES
Deep with justice. Deep with help. A bloomlet let go. Petals weeping
The hang-dog face. I made an atlas with notes from the old self.
That world lost -- rotting at the bottom of the sea. Will it come back?
Things lie dormant for many years but bloom again. It happens all the time.
What planet built a clock in its memory? Some type of forgiveness
That is just out of reach. Who would do such a thing? Those long robes
Are just a sign of weakness. Those men -- they are so afraid.
I let them take so much from me. When the wind opens the door
The little absent human in me wants to cry out in fear, but the bigger
Meaty self knows the wind is just the wind. The world is just the world.
Outside another day turns dark -- like magic! My little dog, too.
She is made of the best earth. Her muzzle near my muzzle reminds me of my
old, alive heart. But then again, maybe it isn’t so old. But it is ancient.
SELFIES WITH ANIMALS
History is sad. All histories are sad.
Ruining the wilderness of language.
You made a theater with your hands.
Those shadows hurt. They feel like hell.
In your brain, the world is upside
down. Mythologies of cause/effect
relooping every time you’re touched.
Imagine that. The heartbeat is a house
of sound. The machines in the sky
look like consonants and vowels.
The terns like a flock of scissors.
We were stupid, yes. We were lonely
and amazed -- feeling the bones inside
our body-house. We were hoping
for a quick fix.
POEM
I opened the wolf’s mouth
and put in my head.
I only wanted to know
what I wanted.
CORRESPONDENCE
I stand in the field talking to a rock
Holding a stick and feather
Wondering about the crookedness of my heart
My ghosts
I borrow a pair of slick wings to play pretend;
the horizon weeps like a drawn curtain
I put my tongue into your mouth
and we turn into a clock
gears clicking my hard chest open
and inside it's so soft
it's like being born in the bug skin of sweet sixteen
tender pleats of depression and re/pair
yes, I think my heart of pink ash is beautiful
but only when you are looking at it
THE WOODS ARE FULL OF POLICEMEN
And so are we. A heart thump-thumps
against the glass, the spectacle
of records, measures. Fingertips
breath holographic secrets -- whispered
into wires that tether town to town.
Is someone alive at the end
of this sentence?
The owl made herself in the top
of the tree, waiting for us
to see her. But no, we couldn’t
take a picture: her wings
pushed shadows across our faces.
JANUARY
Everything on tv is just a funeral:
ticker-tape flashing
clouds go blip-blip
holographs of the holocene
unremembrances of undisturbed visions:
a cave bear never dreamed
of drinking the water here.
What rock floats or orbits towards grief?
Gravity waves vibrantly, and slow –
at least to us, in our blinking:
our cute clocks and calendars:
reassurance we unforgave.
The river widens just enough
to flatten the hellscape that was the reason
we came ashore. I look over my shoulder
to see you dragging bits of wreckage
out of the waves. “It could be useful.”
The day turns inward, aglade.
We unhooked our wings from the ceilings
and set adrift exhaust spinning towards
new continents. What comes
from heaven, from believing.
My bony brave body you are my needle
spinning – the whole idea of North
exists only inside you
Take it up, or throw it away.
I pour more mud onto my arms; they’re
so tired. I wait for you in the muddy banks
of the river. We did such a good job trying.
If you don’t get here soon, I will turn
into a tree
and walk away.
Deep with justice. Deep with help. A bloomlet let go. Petals weeping
The hang-dog face. I made an atlas with notes from the old self.
That world lost -- rotting at the bottom of the sea. Will it come back?
Things lie dormant for many years but bloom again. It happens all the time.
What planet built a clock in its memory? Some type of forgiveness
That is just out of reach. Who would do such a thing? Those long robes
Are just a sign of weakness. Those men -- they are so afraid.
I let them take so much from me. When the wind opens the door
The little absent human in me wants to cry out in fear, but the bigger
Meaty self knows the wind is just the wind. The world is just the world.
Outside another day turns dark -- like magic! My little dog, too.
She is made of the best earth. Her muzzle near my muzzle reminds me of my
old, alive heart. But then again, maybe it isn’t so old. But it is ancient.
SELFIES WITH ANIMALS
History is sad. All histories are sad.
Ruining the wilderness of language.
You made a theater with your hands.
Those shadows hurt. They feel like hell.
In your brain, the world is upside
down. Mythologies of cause/effect
relooping every time you’re touched.
Imagine that. The heartbeat is a house
of sound. The machines in the sky
look like consonants and vowels.
The terns like a flock of scissors.
We were stupid, yes. We were lonely
and amazed -- feeling the bones inside
our body-house. We were hoping
for a quick fix.
POEM
I opened the wolf’s mouth
and put in my head.
I only wanted to know
what I wanted.
CORRESPONDENCE
I stand in the field talking to a rock
Holding a stick and feather
Wondering about the crookedness of my heart
My ghosts
I borrow a pair of slick wings to play pretend;
the horizon weeps like a drawn curtain
I put my tongue into your mouth
and we turn into a clock
gears clicking my hard chest open
and inside it's so soft
it's like being born in the bug skin of sweet sixteen
tender pleats of depression and re/pair
yes, I think my heart of pink ash is beautiful
but only when you are looking at it
THE WOODS ARE FULL OF POLICEMEN
And so are we. A heart thump-thumps
against the glass, the spectacle
of records, measures. Fingertips
breath holographic secrets -- whispered
into wires that tether town to town.
Is someone alive at the end
of this sentence?
The owl made herself in the top
of the tree, waiting for us
to see her. But no, we couldn’t
take a picture: her wings
pushed shadows across our faces.
JANUARY
Everything on tv is just a funeral:
ticker-tape flashing
clouds go blip-blip
holographs of the holocene
unremembrances of undisturbed visions:
a cave bear never dreamed
of drinking the water here.
What rock floats or orbits towards grief?
Gravity waves vibrantly, and slow –
at least to us, in our blinking:
our cute clocks and calendars:
reassurance we unforgave.
The river widens just enough
to flatten the hellscape that was the reason
we came ashore. I look over my shoulder
to see you dragging bits of wreckage
out of the waves. “It could be useful.”
The day turns inward, aglade.
We unhooked our wings from the ceilings
and set adrift exhaust spinning towards
new continents. What comes
from heaven, from believing.
My bony brave body you are my needle
spinning – the whole idea of North
exists only inside you
Take it up, or throw it away.
I pour more mud onto my arms; they’re
so tired. I wait for you in the muddy banks
of the river. We did such a good job trying.
If you don’t get here soon, I will turn
into a tree
and walk away.
|
MICHELLE DETORIE is the author of numerous chapbooks including Fur Birds (Insert Press), How Hate Got Hand (eohippus labs), and Bellum Letters (Dusie). She also makes visual poems, poetry objects, and time-based poetry. In 2007, Michelle was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts literature fellowship, and in 2010 she won a direct-to-artist grant from the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative for her public art project, The Poetry Booth. Her first full-length collection, After-Cave, is just out with Ahsahta Press. She recently completed The Sin in Wilderness, a book-length erasure about love, animals, and affective geography. Her current project is a series of swamp poems narrated by dragons and bitchy ghosts. She lives in Santa Barbara, CA, where she writes, teaches, and edits Hex Presse. She is also the poetry editor for Entropy. |