Over-eager got my stomach pumped,
still-faced and taciturn and all the people
stumbling around me, my mother walked her fingers
along my forehead like butterfly kisses.
I felt I could breathe fire, spitting up bursts of fuel,
launching my guts out of my body like fireworks
and everybody terrified of me, a dragon
bloodthirsty, unconcerned and losing her mind.
I have the impression of being drawn along
by a long conspiracy of coincidences that move
me closer to the worth of all my work –
holding my breath, counting my toes,
cutting each line parallel to the next -
work that stops car wrecks from happening
and keeps my fingernails from falling off.
Waking up again reminded me of some circle of hell
where the over-eager were banished, near-comatose
tapping out each of their hiccups and laughing
to keep from screaming.
I just want to sit next to myself,
a ghost holding the hand of a body
full of oxygen.
There are ten million ways to love yourself
and I could only think of one.
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
First day of spring
I keep thinking about
the end of autumn
-Basho Matsuo
I want to look at the world the way a bird eats a berry,
to hear the perfect sound of a bluejay again
and beat my heart along with the spring.
You knew me better as a cardinal
on a backdrop of snow. Here I am now
broadly disappointed and biting in half these moments
like inevitable fruits. They split and whisper of a soul
that didn’t turn out right, the crunch of the husk
still vibrates in my ears and the juice stains my teeth.
I could never be the right bird in the right tree,
always hiding in the sleeves of my coat,
clutching at my throat, killing the spring
to punish your patience. I took you by the elbow,
bellowed low over the bridge: No one comes to carry us
away from winter.
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
The Day of the Weak
You don’t get to make the clocks
or keep the time, you only get to define
what’s yours. From the frame of your body,
that screaming fabric, the big heart beats.
Who are you without it and what’s killing you now?
You might end up alone or confused; but there’s no use
for a big heart if you have a weak soul.
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
Starfish
love in these times
during these days
when everyone is breaking down
and breaking out and breaking news
you’ve already lost our interest
and the disasters keep accumulating
slow starfish creeping cross
to collect the rent
it’s not the absurdity
but the suspense
and who else is feeling that tense
knot in their shoulder blade
like dollar bills for sinew
and centennial quarters pushing
against the bone, on the fence
even the cats seem worse for the wear
humming and grooming like they know
the rally’s over and now we’re free
if freedom means choosing
your burden
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
Pisces
If I could wish myself away
I would. As the beating heart of a star
folds into herself and disappears
so am I, water lost in the sea and rushing
waves that break on the shoreline.
I always try to swallow my world
in gulps of air and headlong sprints
with palms outward. I could be part of it all
and gone too, fused with an ocean
that lets me be alive and dead all at once.
I stand instead, pink and shivering with cold
and the heaving breaths born of my body, all reminders
that I’m one and not all, I am alone in this skin
I am swallowing up myself
and not the world.
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
Giving Up the Island
There are words sweating from my fingerpads
bleeding underneath my nails
like the pooling of a bruised toe.
Our stage is set and I’m afraid
I might do something dangerous
in the name of poetry.
We’ve named our children
after all our favorite songs.
We’ve given up the island.
(All we’ve ever wanted.)
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
Notes On Her Obsession
plastic. you look like you should be bled
of the oil spilling off your tongue in great stains.
slick in your smiled photographs and cruelly captivating in your two-dimensional ugliness.
a tar surrounds you, whose sparkling teeth
catch flies in the cracks.
vultures are scavenging birds, feeding mostly on the carcasses of dead animals.
like an owl in a glass case.
like a wren behind a window.
like a boy in a room far away from home.
the hard letters of your name pain me,
extract a vengeance out from my bones.
for all i know your clones exist, a great kettle circling my thoughts.
there are few can smell the dead from such great heights.
in your inkiness the sin of vanity, of apathy, sin of circling.
out of myth a fascination, a code written into my body.
i want the ticking of your brains explained,
all the deeds of your heart laid out plainly.
to live as you once, in all your criminality.
i want to shine a spotlight into the black of your silhouette.
to see your ruin, in great puddles.
vultures seldom attack healthy animals, but may kill the wounded or sick.
you sit sleepy, or half torpid, perverse in your open gluttony on those who may seem weaker than you.
like an wren in a room far away from home.
like an owl behind a window.
like a boy in a glass case.
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
Sunflower
Whether both eyes open or none,
I see the light pull off you
ripples pulling off a great splash of fire.
A glow in the night not made by the moon. I become
a candle by your touch. I am not lit
by the stars, my breath a little shorter
in the inhalation of you, my body
a torch in the dark. I spent my days
picturing your body in the dim heat
of my cigarette. An obsession with the burning
in my throat, the same sensation of your mouth
on mine, a heavy tension hanging in my ribcage
as the smoke filters through.
*
When you leave for good I am not sad,
not afraid. I could have been the sunflower,
tempted out to watch you roll over the sky.
Instead I choose not to grow for you,
deep within the ground, I keep my own beacon,
a fire gliding through my veins.
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
Passage
I.
Like water lost in the sea,
I never see myself more than a fleeting second.
I never know what may be there inside
the mirror, except a shadow stretched
across the glass. I stop taking the pills.
A person can’t move
past the things she hates, and I hate
the darkness.
Since I was young I’ve hated
the darkness.
II.
As a child I used to have a dream about a lady with no face.
She freezes in the snow and ash,
stands shivering wet in her nightgown
somehow wailing.
She tries to drown me in a swamp
behind an old factory,
but I stab the side of her head with a ball-point pen
too many times to recognize her afterwards.
III.
In the darkness
there are only the disquieting clicks of soot,
choking out the air and blackening the inches.
IV.
How does light enter a house?
Through the open windows.
How does light enter a person?
I ask myself again and again.
All of the doctors have the answer. They hand out capsules,
with the promise of filling a soul with sunlight.
I am only filled with holes,
broken light and chinks in my bones.
V.
No one sees how I rely on these shadows
like the tall waves rely on the lightning to strike.
Everyone has a darkness they must feed, a blood
they must draw upon to reach the light.
A person can’t move past the things she hates, and I hate
the darkness.
I feed the darkness.
VI.
I think of how my letter might read
to the person who finds me, unidentifiable,
cavernous, poked through to the bone:
If you’d like I’ll stay awake for my autopsy
to keep you company before I go.
Please bury me in daylight.
There’s nothing to keep you company in the dark.
VII.
With the pretense of a proffered peace
I stop taking the pills. Each day
I feel the chemical sunlight
leaving my body dark,
the way it was made. I cling to this nighttime
now. My body wraps around this evening
in the way a body should. In the way a moon flower awakes
at twilight so that she may see the dawn.
VIII.
In my dreams
a match is lit,
and whispers to the darkness
shhhhhhhh.
before bravely burning out.
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
2 Year Anniversary/Heat
the noise from the last parade is rising up in me
like molten rock, this last heat wave crushing my breath
this last summer, the final stick of wood placed on the pile
the stars we wish on have been dead for thousands of years
fiery explosions pre-dating me and you and us
we burn off our fingerprints in the bonfire
so we never have to suffer the same knowing of another
so no one can name us again
it’s been a long, hot disappointment
the summer around me in rapid oxidation
and you, my chronic salamander eating up the fire
you, my misguide mania, you
my unsolvable math problem, you
my Moonlight Sonata on an untuned piano, you
the long stairway, the weak heart, the tar in my lungs, the steam in the cracks of the streets
you are the bells in the air on lonely, hot Sundays
[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]
