Map Making (poem)

Map Making

When the storms roll in
they command me to write.

Thunder cries low in the sky:

Write.

Slices of lightning and high winds drape the landscape —

the scene set to:

Write.

Rain mocks the boundary between the earth and the heavens:

Words

Expand.

They shudder and shiver and bloom.

Write

as if, in a universe various to our own (they exist, let’s be real)
language did not collapse on the tongue
it was not imprisoned and desiccated
like a tree starved for nourishment

Histories Starved for Telling

When it comes

the storm draws out of me the death that I’m dying
everyday

in that
I wake up and fill the prescription and wash it down my throat and the words go with it and I can’t digest them because I don’t know what they are and no one ever told me because their was no one left to name the graves.

So I die a little everyday,
tragically disemboweled of so many stories.

Knowing that
is a surrender
I submit to the storm

the pain

the grief

the inheritance of violence

that I can’t even tell you about because I don’t have the language for that story

but I surrender to it anyway

and
come
out
the
other
side

alive

I am the monster
I am the mess
I am unexpected
and full of rage

and full of the ghosts of wor(l]ds that contain too much

i am uncovered
utterly powerless and weary

I’ve taken shelter here before, in the storm
with its unchartable depths and
unknowable somethings
and it takes me in again and again
and my death and my little dying
and i hold onto
the words
that have blossomed
here

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