a whole bunch

by amy

Surviving Creation

In three hundred years the earth moved one inch
Toward bigger and better
Books for its history, after

Twilights it spent on
Teenagers in cars and
Fathers with babies
And dictionaries with pictures

The map is a plot of the soul of one body
Spread too thin for the world
And others were born to keep company


Family Reunion

In an attic above an old woman sleeping
Gnarled bedclothes and a mind like an island
I spread out dust over cracking fires
Burning up trails, centuries unnoted

My family’s secrets, all of their forearms
They’d stared at in chains through rust-rimmed glasses
Dove into me desperate, filling my lungs
With their longings and days
They’d lost to their portraits

I rid myself of their shrill and sick reaching
By ripping up floorboards and smearing off ceilings
Their bodies left my head when I found the secret
The paper, pen, sign; you will be free


After Excommunication, I Will Pray

There’s no beauty in voices tired of preaching
The truth and the word of the savior we missed
If they’re looking for life
And to save all our souls
They should go out and meet
The women who rob men of their sex
To fill themselves with reverberations
Of somebody else’s half-life they hold onto
By forgetting wife’s faces and offering cash

Where is your master, your doorman, your lord
He lets anyone in with the right set of keys
I’m not a cynic
I’ve known nothing
Except for the light asking me
Where to go


At Dinner Parties

When I was a child I thought I’d be taller
And own real beauty along with a car
Have a much larger chest than what I’ve sunken into
And smaller confusions, and pink-faced tears

I got what I saved for when parent’s friends said
She is so old for her age, and I smiled
Then I sipped wine how a foal learns to walk


Thank You For Saving Me

The truck inched through gravel and I caught sight
Of the green and the white
The windows and fields
Reaching and freedom

I was a mistress
The city still waiting, my past and future
The country my hero and ticket
For more width of the heart
And substance to my lungs

I woke up to a quilt pressed into my legs
Keeping me inside arms
Of the outdoors, the warm kitchen
Everything that was intended to be
Was presented to me in softness
In the bathroom in moonlight
My eyes met my life