Poetry
I need you to tell me
if I should see a doctor.
I’m worried about my heart.
It doesn’t sound right to me.
There is something stranger
than its drumbeat of blood,
a startled newness under
the pulse and the thump,
my heart does something new
when it is in my body
beside your body.
In the morning, beside you,
when the light falls on us,
I swear I hear a small voice
sing a wild quiet song
somewhere beneath my ribs.
The world pulls the sheets
up around her neck:
a still and silent veil,
the early mystery
of white-grey mist,
she keeps the sunrise
a little further off
I want to tuck myself
under the sheets
with the quiet world,
listen to the naked sound
of my body and the world,
pressed hazy against her
in the early mystery
of this February morning.
I chase in my chest
the frightened animal
the ache of you became.
I try to snatch it up
but it scurries into the dark,
it worries my insides with
pine straw and cotton lint,
with scraps of blue thread
it makes comfortable nests.
The little wounded thing
that moved in after you
rustles under my skin
with its own rapid heart,
it thumps out of step
with the muscle in my ribs.
Somewhere under my body,
it sucks up the breaths
I am trying to take.
I have tried to coax it out,
I have left treats and poisons
in the bony hollows of my body,
I have called softly for it
against the river rush of my blood,
I have tried to hold myself still
through unmoving hours,
to wait for the animal ache of you
to scratch up its little courage
and creep out on its own
and when that does not work,
I roar and roar at it
like the lion I am not,
until I have worn myself raw
and slump down exhausted,
it crawls out of my body,
I let my hurt nuzzle up against my throat,
I stroke the soft fur of its body
with my quiet fingers
and let it whisper about you
in my ear for the rest of the night.
— Adam Kamerer
Yo, go check this out. My poem Feraling was featured on The Illusion Exotic, the website of photographer and author Brian Braden.
I met Brian last year at a book signing for his book Abandoned Wiregrass (a beautiful book that you should go buy right now).
Brian approached me recently and asked if he could pair Feraling with some photos he took while wandering the Aracata Forest in Northern California.
These photos perfectly capture the kind of place I was writing about, as if Brian somehow reached into my brain and plucked them out. Head over to his website at the link below and check it out.
I.
I am the kind of tired today
that sits on the inside,
a heavying that shows up on the porch,
invites herself in and cozies up
against heartbeat and bone,
wide hipped, she takes up her space,
she fogs up the windows
and shuts up all the doors,
says Sugar, the sunlight isn’t really
all that warm and golden today,
lets not worry ourselves about it.
She turns off every light in the house,
and creaks the sofa when she sits,
pats the space beside her,
says Come have a seat
beside me, sugar, it’s no good
going out today. Them flowers
smell like dirt and them birds
are stupid animals.
She lays my head against her big soft belly,
pets my hair with her big cold hand,
her hungry stomach groans against my ear,
she croons, Oh, sugar, you’re a
stupid kind of animal too, aren’t you?
Don’t you go getting silly ideas
like the world wants you in it.
Just go on back to sleep, sugar,
and let me keep you quiet.
II.
I am the kind of tired today
that cozies up against heartbeat and bone,
and today the only thing I want
is to sleep against her big soft belly,
but she never stays forever
and tomorrow the sun will gold back up
and tomorrow the flowers will smell rich and sweet
and tomorrow the birds will sing pretty once more
and tomorrow the world will want me.
Your body knows these ways of war,
the tensing jaw, the strangled speech,
the muscled fist that snatches up
your hurried, harried heart,
the stifled lungs that want for air,
the widowed fingers that wander
the battlefields of empty bedsheets,
desperate to find familiar shapes.
Stay here as long as you need,
teeth bared and body poised
to claw and roar and rage.
There’s no shame in lingering
in the place where you spilled
your wet red soul into the dirt
for something that sounded
and looked and felt like love.
But when you are ready,
know that there is only
one road home from war:
let go lies, let go betrayal,
let go promises unkept,
let go all the feints and counterthrusts
your offended heart imagines,
lay down blades and barbs
and let your seizing strength sag
into green grass and clear water,
peace is written not in blood,
but in air and light and distance.
Today is a little better.
The sun is shining and warm
and my favorite coffee shop
has macarons on sale.
I sit in the brightest window
at the front of the shop
with four round bites
of subtle sweetness
on a small round plate
and I allow myself
the rare pleasure
of indulging each flavor:
bold tiramisu, like luxury,
champagne, like celebration,
tart lemon, a mouthful of sunlight,
and smooth chocolate,
simple comfort for a heart
still hurting.
She makes this dish for me:
hot yellow potatoes cut in half
stirred up with long green beans
and crisp flakes of bacon,
all drowned and roasted
in butter and black pepper
and when she pulls back
the tin and the steam
spills aromatic into the air
I feel a little less empty
even if I will still
go home hungry later on.
Each day something dies out:
a particular breed of sea grass,
a six-legged crawler,
a bird with a blue throat.
I remember my father
scraping sticky insect guts
off the windshield
of a blue Chevy Bonaventure
every time he stopped for gas
but the humid air
doesn’t buzz anymore
and the pine trees
beside my grandfather’s house
are chalky and headless
with something eating them up
from the inside,
and the last time
I drove down to Greyton Beach,
I found more plastic baubles,
more cigarettes in the sand
than seashells and kelp weed.
All this to say
I feel a little blighted too
and the lively things
that crawl and warble
and cry out under my skin
are a little more extinct
and I am trying to keep
a little patch of yellow flowers
blooming in my belly
even against
drought and wildfire.