Thumbelina
No matter
how many times
I tell it, I tell it like
someone in the story
who begs the writer
to make it end.
Little girl,
I can’t save you
from the fistfuls
of hair swirling
down the drain,
from Robin &
her protein bars;
her math &
her mouth
a collapsed diamond
at the high-school track--
your face bent,
as if in prayer,
close to asphalt,
poised, for the gun,
the way you’d fly
across the distance
so fast in a body
that wasn’t yours,
sinewy and small
from fleeing--
you lived at the edge
of a mirror, a lake
laced in stone--
running beachside
in the cold
to warp
your weight,
waiting, willingly,
to get it right,
a simple tally--
sting of steel scale
after a shower,
making sure--
that what?
you were loved?
All that time,
all those hours,
trying to answer
such a simple
question--
you who I love,
who is always
right in my ear,
saying starve,
when you really mean
can a story
free me
from the days.
So I tell it, though
it never changes.
It only gets louder.
It’s a million women
humming all at once,
humming
make it end.
how many times
I tell it, I tell it like
someone in the story
who begs the writer
to make it end.
Little girl,
I can’t save you
from the fistfuls
of hair swirling
down the drain,
from Robin &
her protein bars;
her math &
her mouth
a collapsed diamond
at the high-school track--
your face bent,
as if in prayer,
close to asphalt,
poised, for the gun,
the way you’d fly
across the distance
so fast in a body
that wasn’t yours,
sinewy and small
from fleeing--
you lived at the edge
of a mirror, a lake
laced in stone--
running beachside
in the cold
to warp
your weight,
waiting, willingly,
to get it right,
a simple tally--
sting of steel scale
after a shower,
making sure--
that what?
you were loved?
All that time,
all those hours,
trying to answer
such a simple
question--
you who I love,
who is always
right in my ear,
saying starve,
when you really mean
can a story
free me
from the days.
So I tell it, though
it never changes.
It only gets louder.
It’s a million women
humming all at once,
humming
make it end.
As I am about to walk through the body
I remember—I’ve filled the cavern
with all the ancestors who hate each other.
Their silver hunger, orchestrated hands,
their careful arteries and striated bones.
Doesn’t it make sense, the claw-marks?
The mind’s brackish static, the pink hum
behind the eyes? Sometimes I leave myself
a voicemail which begins: is it really you?
I forget who dialed first, who brought forth
the motion that brings them towards
each other, jostling my throat,
borrowing my face. So I walk them
into red hills, extraordinary sky.
I am trying to build a good life.
I want them to see, if not each other, then dawn.
with all the ancestors who hate each other.
Their silver hunger, orchestrated hands,
their careful arteries and striated bones.
Doesn’t it make sense, the claw-marks?
The mind’s brackish static, the pink hum
behind the eyes? Sometimes I leave myself
a voicemail which begins: is it really you?
I forget who dialed first, who brought forth
the motion that brings them towards
each other, jostling my throat,
borrowing my face. So I walk them
into red hills, extraordinary sky.
I am trying to build a good life.
I want them to see, if not each other, then dawn.
It’s true, I thought lapidarian was a reptile
like a diamond-back,
or a bearded dragon.
Now I get confused
by white light tangling
the branches, as if etched,
the wind’s rattle. Wasn’t it spring
when the snakes came out of their dens,
black-tongued, roiling?
They sounded like rain-sticks
and my fear just was. Even now,
I watch my step but the fact
that they were,
better than buffed stone--
and I couldn’t
keep them, couldn’t keep
any of that spring:
its crushed coke bottles
and melted radios,
polaroids so wet with spit
they stamped my jeans--
I couldn’t carry with me
how the whole time, a
dense, impossible, fire
polished everything
from underneath,
even my mouth's
pink stitching
forming words.
Mantle. Bottle. Sun
suddenly cloaked,
chiral. I’ve forgotten
so much but still,
I keep saying
coach whip, black-tailed, milk snake
instead of rage.
or a bearded dragon.
Now I get confused
by white light tangling
the branches, as if etched,
the wind’s rattle. Wasn’t it spring
when the snakes came out of their dens,
black-tongued, roiling?
They sounded like rain-sticks
and my fear just was. Even now,
I watch my step but the fact
that they were,
better than buffed stone--
and I couldn’t
keep them, couldn’t keep
any of that spring:
its crushed coke bottles
and melted radios,
polaroids so wet with spit
they stamped my jeans--
I couldn’t carry with me
how the whole time, a
dense, impossible, fire
polished everything
from underneath,
even my mouth's
pink stitching
forming words.
Mantle. Bottle. Sun
suddenly cloaked,
chiral. I’ve forgotten
so much but still,
I keep saying
coach whip, black-tailed, milk snake
instead of rage.
|
Raisa Tolchinsky is the author of the poetry collection Glass Jaw (Persea Books), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize (2023). She has published poems in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Raisa earned her MFA from the University of Virginia and her B.A. from Bowdoin College. She was the 2022–2023 George Bennett Writer-in-Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and is currently a student at Harvard Divinity School.
www.raisatolchinsky.com |
