D. Allen
Meet me in the garden |
at the start of the
|
season when the magnolia is just
beginning to bloom. The raspberry brambles behind the house are
vivid with leaves—
the cedar, green all along, doesn’t begrudge the forsythia
its alchemy—
there is no blight, no waterlogged soil, no sun-starvation, not yet,
there is still time.
Let me be clear: I do not want to love you in a world without
winter,
I would not know how. But here I remember to
undo the knotted roots
of seedlings so others may flourish. Alive among monuments, we
kiss
without checking the clock. Here, even alone, I can see your face in
my hands,
your blue dimensions. Above the vines and wildflower beds our
broken bodies
tower over us, carved in stone, veined with mosses and lichens,
no longer
ours. They are quiet. Relieved of the duty of
holding.
beginning to bloom. The raspberry brambles behind the house are
vivid with leaves—
the cedar, green all along, doesn’t begrudge the forsythia
its alchemy—
there is no blight, no waterlogged soil, no sun-starvation, not yet,
there is still time.
Let me be clear: I do not want to love you in a world without
winter,
I would not know how. But here I remember to
undo the knotted roots
of seedlings so others may flourish. Alive among monuments, we
kiss
without checking the clock. Here, even alone, I can see your face in
my hands,
your blue dimensions. Above the vines and wildflower beds our
broken bodies
tower over us, carved in stone, veined with mosses and lichens,
no longer
ours. They are quiet. Relieved of the duty of
holding.
magnetic resonance imaging
resonant magnetic imagining
imagining magnetic resonance
magnetic imaging resonates
resonating images magnetize
images resonate magnetism
Inside the white chamber I am a flat
quiet surface waiting for transformation
Slid pale and papered into a center of
sound a vortex of quake and hammer
A body become fret board truss rod
bridge strings tuner pegs and skin head
Here there is space for one plus a thin
blue line dividing the sky for company
Blazing meridian it begins to shiver as
the shaking clanging becomes louder
Electric eel friend I cannot hold you
any longer in my field of vision blink
In the closer quarters of closed eyelids
even intimate night’s divided by bright
Narrow stripe embroidered in perfect
light onto the hem of the soundscape
The technician offered a soundtrack
of my choosing to cover the banging
But no now I am the outraged radio
the body clamoring the body in uproar
If the tendon is going to tear I want to
hear it I want to hear it
loud
We were going to build a dark room
but this never came to fruition
We can’t bring ourselves to leave
this house of unimaginable light
not since we woke to find our arms
green and rustling
one morning after a bender
our bodies that had curled inward
now pressed wildly against windowpanes
appetites vacant, simplified
In the Before we rushed
to draw black curtains
we prayed at the night’s
charcoal altars (please show me
the wholeness of my own self)
we loved the way we melted
into each other, how our edges blurred
without the day’s harsh contrast
Nothing is green in the dark
and we are now experts
on green, or our skin
(if you can still call it that) is
We were going to build a dark room
but instead you are holding
the hacksaw while I steady
the ladder
slicing back ceiling and roof shingles
to expose the summer sky
--
D. Allen is a queer poet and multidisciplinary artist living in Minneapolis, MN. They are a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing MFA program, a recipient of the 2017 Minnesota Emerging Writers’ Grant from The Loft Literary Center, and a 2017 Lighthouse Works Fellow. D.’s work has recently appeared in District Lit, Connotation Press, Lockjaw Magazine, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. Their current project examines the inner life of a queer, disabled, genderqueer body through the lens of grief and intimacy.