Something bright, then holes is how a girl, newly-sighted, once described a hand.
I planned to write a book about the color blue. Now I’m suddenly surrounded by green, green gagging me pleasurably, green holding onto my hips from behind, digging into the cleft, the cleft that can be made. You have no idea what kind of light you’ll let in when you drop the bowl, no idea what will make you full.
The water is perfectly still, as if we pressed the planet on pause.
The barbed wire is lovely tonight and the sparrows don’t mind its tangle.
One by one the floodlights wink on, abolishing night, soon all the colors will be illumined by artificial light, thus separating us from our ancestors.
The fireflies have dried up too, so the kids have been bringing their own in jars.
It’s been hot, the violets are tired. The daisies are peeling, and my whole hand is shaking.
A sad dusk here, the water swollen with debris.
those who believe in a compassionate wilderness, those whose bodies beget an absolute forgetfulness.
I could sink into a certain comfort here, just disappear / Yet I sense the goddess
The garden has peaked, the flowers sagging like hoses out of their cement enclosures.
Yesterday a rose burst forth inside me, today the rose fled, the world suddenly colorless.
September’s brought a calm purple flowering, the shadows thick on the water.
I hosted a flood here, it changed my contours the way only water can.
The cut on my mouth was shaped like a country
You came to salt the earth and you salted it, but I was too tired of mourning
Maggie Nelson, Something Bright, Then Holes
