Poetry
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
A Toddler Points Up and Says “Sky” for the First Time
What did it feel like to be the first?
emerged from the depths
to become tree-dweller and see the earth
curving beneath you, just to climb down
just to walk until exhaustion, over and over
until you’ve traveled too far to return
What did it feel like to be the first?
to wrap your tongue around the first word
a guttural sound—naming what?
the sky? Or was it water? Or was it
our mother, her hands, her breast?
What did we first call her milk
what about the moon and forest?
How much grunting did it take
to forge the whole world into words?
Did we ever stop to consider
some things should be left without names?
And yet other things that yearn for a name
somehow remain unsayable?
Did we notice the words becoming boxes?
How hard it would be to write ourselves out?
If Anicka Yi’s Xenojellies Could Talk
Would they ask to be freed from Tate Modern’s turbine hall
into the thirty-seven million billion gallons of sky?
Or would they question our heaviness, if we’d like to fly
in their aquarium of machines: all paper tentacles and wires?
Or would they be curious at the pointing arms as one inquires
How does it know where to go? Look at that head-thing,
it has so many fans running code. When they stop, they fall.
Would they then ask what source drives our motors?
Could they understand even if we explained our sticky electricity?
Our refusal to acknowledge our programming at all?
I Forget Nightfall and Go Walking Anyway
I
I pace. A long meandering pace that may look like insanity. My feet send rocks scattering between the rails. A clamor drawing eyes from commuters that don’t second glance the trains I follow: their horns roaring, their wheels grinding the tracks. When they come up from behind I jump aside, thrilling as I miss a train-edge mangle me. Maybe if I was sleek and metal. Maybe if I was made with wheels. Crafted for one purpose. Maybe then I would be as happy as a machine. Instead my legs grow weary, my feet grow cold with the waning sun—
A black and pregnant sky
belly pressing pink light.
Punctured in their caress I halt.
and when my knees bend the sky bends with me.
II
My undercarriage catches your ruminations along with wayward plastics. Why didn’t I visit her last week? I didn’t think it would be my last chance. I savor the word “visit”, and bypass your grief entirely—it's the territory of lingerers. Of passengers who board and linger in my bowels, each heavy with their own losses. My engines whine and our momentum seems unstoppable when I see you, kneeling on the tracks. The conductor tries to break, my wheels sparking red. And for a moment I’m afraid you will be another creature I’ve split in half. You jump aside and I hear— Mother, look what you’ve done to the sky!
And for the first time I wished I could be something else
something that could see the sky.
that could linger
and share a sunset with someone gone.