alight
i thought we were trees,
shrieking, dense, millenial. but no, we were hands,
we were ocean hands, blind,
fleeing, ignorant. unknowing we swept seawater into
speech, cleaving, the fugitive
madness settles, grief a feathered mouth, a mother
that stays, when we face
pain she says, alight, child, alight, we are torn, born
wanting. hollow as moon &
sometimes the fragment is a continent that floats,
a proposition, a bloodletting.
sometimes before they were mothers they had been
the most devoted of friends.
most often, we shine before sideways the wave, she
folds under us, cold as milk,
wingless, sure, free, a clearing we cling to, rooted.
shrieking, dense, millenial. but no, we were hands,
we were ocean hands, blind,
fleeing, ignorant. unknowing we swept seawater into
speech, cleaving, the fugitive
madness settles, grief a feathered mouth, a mother
that stays, when we face
pain she says, alight, child, alight, we are torn, born
wanting. hollow as moon &
sometimes the fragment is a continent that floats,
a proposition, a bloodletting.
sometimes before they were mothers they had been
the most devoted of friends.
most often, we shine before sideways the wave, she
folds under us, cold as milk,
wingless, sure, free, a clearing we cling to, rooted.
not the, kiss that kills
leg of geranium, hand of rose, one sister have i
and one hedge. flowers come to our door, we lie
beneath. how the poison branch breaks the sky:
this is your punishment, this is your suffering,
this is your debt and your due. we build our hearts
among, trade in china, split cows and skin birds.
we come forth and sometimes singing. but no one
cares after the song or what promise, this thing
called faith. the revelation is always home-grown,
small, weightless. like how the sky blue grave
opens from above, not below. like how the whistle
comes just after, not before. like fatal flowers you
risk your lips to, just this once. or just once twice.
and one hedge. flowers come to our door, we lie
beneath. how the poison branch breaks the sky:
this is your punishment, this is your suffering,
this is your debt and your due. we build our hearts
among, trade in china, split cows and skin birds.
we come forth and sometimes singing. but no one
cares after the song or what promise, this thing
called faith. the revelation is always home-grown,
small, weightless. like how the sky blue grave
opens from above, not below. like how the whistle
comes just after, not before. like fatal flowers you
risk your lips to, just this once. or just once twice.
two unsamed eyes
here an unnamed horror screeches from the brow, shore to two unsamed
eyes upon the grass-growing self- same face, i will copy you too, and
your golden ring, bring you eggs at day’s break, bird-moon, we will two
knock at your door and ask whose triumphs do you keep in whose box,
ivory-lain i have tried to assert the dignity of, i draw the sky blue grave,
your eyes who do not and the eternal importance, but also you have the
wild look of the hare about you, fire- stunned, uncatchable, your home
beneath the hedgerow of the human being, the ice catches, and the light
catches, and were medusa a verb you would stare us all down, mankind on
our knees, wanting, waiting for the stroke, the freeze, how the colours fall.
eyes upon the grass-growing self- same face, i will copy you too, and
your golden ring, bring you eggs at day’s break, bird-moon, we will two
knock at your door and ask whose triumphs do you keep in whose box,
ivory-lain i have tried to assert the dignity of, i draw the sky blue grave,
your eyes who do not and the eternal importance, but also you have the
wild look of the hare about you, fire- stunned, uncatchable, your home
beneath the hedgerow of the human being, the ice catches, and the light
catches, and were medusa a verb you would stare us all down, mankind on
our knees, wanting, waiting for the stroke, the freeze, how the colours fall.
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Karen Elizabeth Bishop is a UK/US poet, translator, and scholar. Recent poetry appears in Lana Turner, Bennington Review, Poetry Northwest, New Writing Scotland, and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her debut poetry collection, the deering hour, was published in 2021 by Ornithopter Press. She teaches literature and directs the new Translation Studies Initiative at Rutgers University, runs (with David Sherman) The Elegy Project, and was the 2023 recipient of the inaugural Community Megaphone Fellowship from Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Library. She divides her time between the wilds of New Jersey and Sevilla, Spain.
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