#vive vive

[panteneprovcommercial]

I've Endured, Now What?

Blue Iris - Mary Oliver / So This Is All I Will Ever Be? - Fatima Aamer Bilal / Vive, Vive - Traci Brimhall

[lifeinpoetry]

Even in dreams I’m flightless, incapable of escaping. My prayers return as a knife and the commandment I carve into the skin of an apple, gentle with the flesh, gentler with the blade, before I suck the sweetness from each of the wounds I made.

— Traci Brimhall, from “Vive, Vive,” Come the Slumberless To the Land of Nod

[elizabethsproctor]

I will not give the night what it wants.

Traci Brimhall, Vive Vive

[lifeinpoetry]

God, God, what do I do / after all this survival?

Traci Brimhall, from “Vive, Vive,” published in The Missouri Review

[lifeinpoetry]

Even in dreams I’m flightless, incapable of escaping. My prayers return as a knife and a commandment I carve into the skin of an apple, gentle with the flesh, gentler with the blade, before I suck the sweetness from each of the wounds I made.

— Traci Brimhall, from “Vive, Vive,” published in The Missouri Review

[drizzlingrain]

God, God,/ what do I do/ after all this survival?

I think there is a point where all the sorrow and the pain and indignation at the unfairness of the universe melts into anger and rage. "My Lord, why is goodness so hard for me?"

"I hiss at him, I want him to know/ danger/ is coming from both sides. You can't even/ trust what you love."

This meanness is truly what we do when we know how helpless we are. Sometimes, when I'm swallowed up in rage by my own incompetence, my own inability to do things that would have come easily years ago, my pointless clawing at the glass like the cat in this poem, I'm suddenly reminded, "But wasn't I good once?"

Perhaps I shouldn't post poems this long. But this one is so dear to my heart.

[a-lovers-discourse]

You can’t even trust what you love.  God, God, what do I do after all this survival? My prayers return as a knife and a commandment I carve into the skin of an apple, gentle with the flesh, gentler with the blade, before I suck the sweetness from each of the wounds I made.

Traci Brimhall, excerpts from Vive, Vive.