Rebecca Doverspike
The rib of Adam in me grows feverishly
(what is implicit is easily forgotten;
we all come from a womb and so harbor both
bodies, deep mythologies)
like all other bones, you can look back
across a long drawbridge, a stretched out memory, a ribboned road
concrete and steadfast enough
to hold falling leaves—through that distance something nameless comes
clear.
What if pain came before the apple
and dear Eve placed herself beside every woman
down the line out of compassion? What if her knowledge
preceded the fruit? What we are homesick for
cannot be found in this world. Twilight and dusk blue touch
upon it. Daily I ask of myself the difficult task
not to erase longing. To accept the undoing
inside/out inside/out inside/out (the best advice: keep
whatever can stay unwritten unwritten) the tongue dreams
of wild prairies, tall grasses, but most days it shapes predictable beads
outside/inside are both ghosts of trees, please hold this ghost carefully;
the body sings its own way.
If you crack the ribs open there are stars
what would the world be like if you believed that without doing it? Magic
just beneath the surface.
Time makes the body break as waves
in the whole of the ocean; the seconds are whole
the fishes’ bright mouths on bright hooks
and every day the endless sadness but if it cannot art
iculate lit like street lamps illuminating branches as webs in the quiet orange
the silk of it
it can take a while for evening to settle—
mud soaked through with rain looking toward the end of a long candle’s taper
delicious movement in the word unfolding—
a flame to keep the bluest blue star flickering under our chests from being only cold
like how each night the sun is swallowed
as darkness holds a concentrated disc of light
and every morning, the sun slips silent from the throat in a burst of choice, as if it were my choice
to keep the sky there all day long; to speak at all.