by Chelsea Dingman
By which I mean the migraines will not recede
while we speak little, or not at all,
the irritation of heat rising from buckled
streets. Some violence is so casual
we can’t claim it while it is happening. Instead,
sky fills our mouths as the birch trees
sprout wings. Still, you say nothing
about your mother dying alone in a hospital
bed after you speak to her over video
chat, our children chasing the day’s end
on the tails of dragonflies. How our last baby was born
afterward, as the migraines increased. You don’t have to tell me. And yet,
we touch forehead after forehead, flies
flitting from one surface to another—
mouths upon mouths falling
open. As we don’t speak of the chew in your cheek
or what it means that your sign is cancer
or the coffee burning in the kitchen when my brother goes
missing. We don’t speak at all
of sightlessness, the nausea brimming in me, the river that offers
the trees asylum, the field where your mother’s ashes
were buried, my family history of strokes, train tracks
overlooking the river where I used to run
when I had nowhere after my father died, anxieties
of this ordinary life that is given
to failure. If suffering is a story of will,
we don’t ask what anyone deserves. Instead, you take me
to the field, brimming with fever
-few. It’s believed that certain cures for pain
can make you sicker, you say. The heat hovers above us.
My eyes, unseeing. A thousand eyes rise
from the field, & all that I can’t see
becomes reprieve. The sun in its fever,
husking us into dusk.
Greed of the fir
trees in spring. Aflame
with mid-afternoon light. Transposed onto lake:
what death did I want
twice? Confusing snowmelt
for desire. Licking the lake-bottom. Is pain the trope, or just
a shadow, dressed in boy’s clothes? Destitute
when laying down. Not unlike my father
who stole the aspect & orientation
of a plot
as the lake laid down in him. The opposite of flight:
diagnosis. Where I store all things
worth dying for. If I have to gain
the future, let it be slow. I can’t bear
to sleep
yesterday: my daughter,
squatting on a storm
drain, listening to late snow
wash past
above.
Chelsea Dingman's first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Her second poetry collection, Through a Small Ghost, won The Georgia Poetry Prize (University of Georgia Press, 2020). Her third collection, I, Divided, is forthcoming from Louisiana University Press in 2023. She is also the author of the chapbook What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.