Ellen Gould

the seam

​Halves of the body fuse
along a Seam,
an unseen plane which is
not life but shears
clean through it
possessing
one dimension,
unbreathing
 
A woman is known to be
its familiar, and so requires
this delicate divorce
from intimacy with
the Seam
as if it were her design
and not just a knife she knows
to cradle

Where it plumbs through
does she pull further instructions
divined along that binding
where she seals to herself
feed them through
the corded center
of the next body
she fills
 
Leading a cloven life,
leaking steadily into
an unknown receiver
Mirrored mass
another node now stationed
in the centerline of her
gleaming proof of symmetry’s rule
riven with inevitable parting line

--
Ellen Gould lives in Oakland, California and discovered in a recent time of crisis that poetry is how she stays intact. She has been featured in OpenDoor Poetry Magazine and hopes to complete a book-length collection in 2021. Ellen is a graphic designer/illustration agent and holds a BFA from California College of the Arts, where she studied poetry with Michael McClure and Rae Armantrout.