Member Poem

Everything circles back around.
She woke up and the air seemed full.
She stood into the shining dust
and felt the bodies of the dead
against her arms, inside her mouth,
and the bodies said, We know you.

Lover, I’m compelled to map you
topographically, to tongue around
your rise and fall against my mouth.
Shouldn’t our mass, so breathing and full,
haul more tides than the dead
moon? Volcanic, we’re fire, then dust.

This valley’s filling up with dust.
The sky bloats a brown bruise over you.
It’s leaf litter and red clay and anything dead.
I pull up our collars and wet them all around
but it’s too late, already our noses are full,
the grit of our ancestors in my mouth.

They say this time of year the mouth
of Earth opens and grinds into dust
daughters with their teeth still full
of fruit, crowns them with asters. You
say it’s the other way around,
that all the revelers we meet are dead.

I can tell you, matter is not dead.
Broken by his oxytocin mouth,
feeling the stars reel around,
I heard the stones, the sand, the joyful dust.
Electrons hum. Those atoms inside you
are empty, and they are also full.

When your years are ripe and full,
you will be both dead and not dead.
Eve’s climbed back into the trees; you,
her children, healed her blighted mouth.
Your mother gave you cells as fine as dust.
You’re full of ghosts. We’ll be around.

This poem first appeared in Calliope.