Haley Wooning
1.
we, clouded with error
create from the language of breath
an earth, murked without
wisdom but the reaching
of so many hands – they curl,
emptied between each finger,
and even the dirt does not
stay for long
what else have we failed? The human
forest, mutilated and forgettable as
the waters we stare into, briefly,
through childhood.
attempting to pin something
like an insect
to memory
but they slip, all things slip
and I do not even know to
grab them
from the soil
again
so they rot there, lonely as I – as we
who disparage and lose all are –
the roots scrap over our
absence, we are eaten for love
the wolves are tamed
there is no more son
— what were you saying?
2.
it has been so long, Eros
if you came here now, would I recognize you?
the bells withdraw into dawn like so many stars wilting over the
dissection of flowers, the splintering spirit, the despairing disguise
here marks the lover’s dying gaze – who could turn from this horror?
many times it happened, gain and loss, the inevitable exchange
of isolation
and so it will continue, like the crunching of bones beneath a dragon’s
great feet, the dead smell of sun on woodlands, the absent tenderness
of a ship’s stiff sail pulled on by no wind, so sitting, listless and
maimed by its own still reflection, erroneous as my breathing
the dream wilts below the heat of its chainmail, with the skull
removed, the flux that flows is like that of a once-hidden wound
I wait and wait, never truly dispelling my want for someone to look
in and see, but acceptance, pulsing somewhere, is strange to me
and only doubts are left to accumulate – do the dead tire of lilies?
passions, various, leave me; against my wishes, the light was never kind
but somewhere, the sea churns, the earth, like a beast, slinks onward
along the great plummeting brow of an indifferent universe and
all my bundled hopes, neat as the folded wings of an unsent letter,
root their day-blanched thoughts to dirt and carry away rumors
of me, somewhere, to be known
3.
april comes, her arms molded with the longings of magnolia
the animal secludes itself, a single throat, and so whispers into
the dark: I have witnessed eternity
where I have gone, I have gone alone – there is no one to cast
pity on the stony palm of all my errors or know how each smudge of
dusk expands itself like a heart for nothing
no dreams, no agelessness, nothing for the world to remember –
when did I ever cast a shadow? when did I know a thing that did
not prove itself to be false? the footsteps, love’s lure
that embittered itself – again and again – on the landscape of a window
never looking out; this is my singular belonging, this room, this color
the ghosts that come and go, watching me flail from life to life
the woods speak, the sky’s infinite armament disarms itself,
the earth is sickened with what the impossible seems to promise
spring, you come,
but my Eye is shut
4.
the constellations, weary with what they’ve seen
collapse in the pulse of all
that is not here
dark, the cloven hoof
black the spread of crocus like disease
I have been past
what you hear in the final chamber
I know the hollow throat of a door
that can only rasp itself
closed
there are riddles in the ribbon that yawns
itself into puddles of sunlight on the floor,
each animal despairs of them
the traps are set, the ankle is weak
where I go I go alone and into
every disclosure
pale peony, I
obscured
by the sound
of rain
what comes after
sorrow? you leaf through
me like an
animal body
I burn yellow with the
hot, restless empire
of eternity, each grief
disembodied, how
to whittle out from
the paper souls a
hope for more?
5.
somewhere, I am loved but the
black leaves pool in and cloud the promise
it is a form of suffering: the body’s defacement
into armor, the unsent letters piled on the field
like so many dead
geese pushing out from the marsh into
lands forever beyond me
like grief, the season burns, I have been theft
of a name easily called or remembered the rot
of intimacy,
do you remember the spires we touched
while the moon still bred tenderness?
like all else, I question
the fruits I carry home
they slip from my arms and
I grow old
***
Haley Wooning lives in California where she teaches Middle and High School English classes. Her collection of poetry, Mothmouth, was published by Spuyten Duyvil.