Unkind Certainties
Desire-bloated O tenacious want
with eyes determinedly averted from
a speechless phone and history’s kernel ripe
against my longing bellyache I trace
the lovers down a humming throat to times
when leaving meant what leaving’s meant to mean
at most a gangly writ if passion kept
received in weeks or months or not at all
if Clotho’s scissors slipped too soon and sliced
through sprawling ribbons of black threading ink
with no more effort than a little catch-
breath kiss the kind he palmed to pretty me
atop the quilt picture the river flood
o’er banks and flush the only road perhaps
a city razed and left for carrion-meal
or unshod horse or broken cart axel
see all these ways that loving once was shorn
is what I nearly said to him in my
suspension ‘twixt the present and the rest
and now I find me fixing for the past
gavotting slow and empty-armed because
though modern-made I’m sticky in that silk
that webbed those lovers centuries ago
but crueler still for dangling mothlike here
no respite giv’n by unseen fate-hands for
it’s he alone has both spindle and shears
Coltsfoot on Coburn
So, on the off chance you might start,
I polish the silver. By the time my hands go still
and lay down now spoon, now knife in the fold
of the dun rag, an ill-centered sun’s reach
has forgotten full half the room, has rent
the butcher-block countertop and slipped to coil
up a night’s length. I turn again, attempt to uncoil
my spine, all poised and perched (as at the start
of my larval years, when I began to pay this rent,
due at odd intervals). Even in this kind dusk, I fail, still
scared as a fly, for by your lean light I could reach
no keeping-place. Friend: perhaps I will fold,
resign with grace, address my failures to you. Fold
that. Bury it somewhere traceless, near a snake’s coil—
In the milkweed! Where I watch a wasting fawn keen, reach
her weaned and waned limbs out at evening, feel her start
and reel. I call out: Let her stay. I think that still
I could ask you home: The sage is gangly, and the rent
in the coop fence is nearly fixed (though it sorely rent
my fool hands to mend). Maybe a bottle would fold
up our old bruise? Or does this rusted-through still
brew but bitter beer? Was what I thought a backfire the recoil
of a rifle after all? Yet you, as I, have read the start
of a violent breath. You too have seen the vast reach
of a spit word, so I clip the pinions, check the reach
of fear. I show you my lettings-go in still
shivering hands, and in this empty room you strike a fire-start,
hold the brand between us. Now you see? The fold
of your meanness keeps its dark corner. But I’m sorry to recoil
from your honest, your uncruel flame. Well, the silver’s still
out. The dusk hour quickens in its still-
ness. I count knives, spoons. Coyote yips reach
right through the windows in a faceless coil.
And here a chick, here a swallow, here a twig paying rent
to a stove. In this hale hollow’s careful fold
I’ll stay a while more. Get on with the sweeping. Start
to coil up the fence, let hens loose in the sage, and on still
feet start in on the silver anew. For, my will’s reach
untold, I’ll forgive what you have rent, break what I can’t fold.
Keel
It’s been slow, this
Measured and mindful shove off
A boundless island
With land enough to feed, water enough to slake
Fields inept
at the economics of love
From which only fools depart
Fool I, I gathered up the grain and
The chaff, bundled up the full sheaves
Against the coming damp
left the roots
Did the best I could by me
And the wheat
And the ergot rye
For from this sly isle’s eye
I must away before I am grown in
Entire, which is why I’m scratching this note
Roanoke, roanoke
I walked the land seven times
Plains to shore
Strained beneath casks, cow-eyed and heavy
lamenting like a loon
until my bird-voice gave
The anchor could not hold fast a skip
Passenger-laden
& provision-heavy in such silt as this
It upturned the sea-floor
Mica blinded the crawdads
It would have been cruel
to harbor long
And no amount of asking will sturdy a sea-bed
Nor can any iron weigh this
Out here’s more light than there’s right to be
Though I’d barter hours for a bushel of that bad grain
But the sea proffers honesties to the willing
A spade of puffin beak
Twenty barrels of salt
A single calfless whale
Beds without quilts and fish best raw
What it is to have both rot and cate
Biographical Note: Hannah grew up in Vermont, and her writing is heavily influenced by the ecosystems of her home state, theology, linguistics, and literature of all time periods with a current interest being early English poetry. When she’s not writing or reading, she enjoys playing music with friends, hiking, and making soup. She is a first-year at Vassar College.