NAOMI WASHER

                                     



FROM WE WILL BE INSIDE


It was this way:

 

 

                                                                      we grew into ritual
                                                                      grew down into soil
                                                                      till all that was left
                                                                      was the promise of beheading
                                                                      believing in return

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We gather orange peels in the palms of our hands.
We huddle in stairwells, in schoolhalls, to dream.

We believe in other versions of our selves.

Where we roam is not our home but even so we live there, there where the leaves crunch beneath our feet and the doors creak and fall upon their hinges. There where we break in—through the window—with our boots—following the path of this constant desire to return home.

If there are two kinds of fear, then we are ever fearful that the door we stay out looking for—the red door, falling on its hinges and peeling—will forever elude us, will forever be one state over, there where the other self is kissing his bride and going off to war.

 

                                                                      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our honey grandfather keeps bees in the backyard. We never know when we will find him: on a Sunday perhaps—tending, tending.

We stick our fingers in the honey jars he gives us. We suck out all the sweetness running down. We make ourselves sick with it.

Our honey grandfather is always happy to see us when we come. He adopts us in the backyard among the hives. We have difficulty playing everyday games after this: our mouths are stuck with honey: we can’t speak. We try, but the words become slippings of when / what / why / who / where. We say take me home and it comes out all the gods are buried in the yard. We say what’s for dinner We say how long is the drive and will you take me there but it comes out as dig our graves in hiding / dig till you find us below / dig far-reaching / when you find us, we will feed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in the barn, boughs bend and reconfigure

[why are we here?]

dust trips up and finds us whole

[have we been here before?]

a hand trails nails and wooden slats

[would we know if we have been here or not?]

a face disappears through broken boards

[if we come back?]

watch one leg remain, still here, still here, still…

[will it be the same?]

watch arms wrap around the roof

[will we find it, the thing that we are looking for?]

climb atop the wood pile, see gray october sky, fill pockets up with fingers holding fast

[is this a story or impressions on a string?]

remember arms, remember pale thin arm reaching ever

[who will tell of all this when we are gone?]

we have not been the first, we have wanted corners driven from the mind

[how will they say what we have seen?]

listen and repeat till the branches crash down heaping and the field is a blanket sewn and torn

[how will they see it?]

we have known what we will be, at the end of things a dream, buried in the road

[and who will listen?]

and who will climb back through the log piles of years, the dusty heaps of years, wrapping hand round wrist, thumb round stone

[we will be inside the nest, original, humming]

[we will be there whispering]

[we will be inside]

                                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Make me a coffee table on your stoop. Make me a bookshelf, four walls and a door. Make me dark-wooded windows. Make me a rug. Make me an armchair rounded with age. Make me tile in the kitchen. Make me a radiator’s stuttered hissing. Make me a map on the wall, a light bulb flickering. Make me desk drawers overflowing. Make me a headboard and a doorway. Make me a willow cabin at your gate, and call upon my soul within the house. My porch is not a porch but a landing. A place to begin.                                                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

                                   

TYPO 26