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I try hard to stay tucked within what is.
Distorted branches reflect in the
black glass of the endtable. The world
gives us surface shine. The forest is still;
the wind forgot to whisper, to speak so
it may be seen. I keep a lamp on, afraid
of permutations of darkness, and of
what my mind will build from them. The shadows
shorten and lengthen as day passes, being of
what is, but cast off. Phantoms of the
leaves flit over the ground. In the full dark,
I see only the contours of your face.
*
Deer wait for the tip of twilight, of
waning day. Birds have a singular opera for the
receding shine, movement of light over earth.
Into the sentence of night's hours, I'm falling.
Blackness eats the blacktop, spanning across
the unkempt land, hiding its teeth. The
night gobbles light, lays down quiet for the moon.
I am in my evening gown of moss. The
night opens her mouth wide. In the dark
the sky pulls back and exposes earth.
*
I live directly across the street from
Death. We have coffee together. Which
way will the bat swerve in its flight? We've
learned to talk casually, me from fear sprung
like a tulip from its bulb. Lead me to
the secret core of the stars, toward which
I'm leaning in full bright hope. What are we
but flecks of night the sun chipped off? I shall
wear my ballgown of stained glass when I return
to the semaphore of light's rays. I will say, What
language is that? Death and I conversed too long, we
have forgotten the words the day speaks. Do
you speak in the hours' commas? I'm not
a widow of sunshine. I've come to know
a little of night's language, the way it lies
across the laminated floor. Come in,
eat the supper made of darkness.
*
My eyelids are closed so often. I'm the
mole in the heart of the earth, a way
of sleeping before sleep. I will stay in the
center of the moment. It's unsayable,
it passes fast as light, it never rests.
I'm at the cusp of the moon's crescent, at
the back of the theater, seeing the
movie and the watchers alike. Back
before I died, I dreamed of romance, of
a wholeness made up of two. Now I am the
wholeness, paper of acid on night's tongue.
What you see should not be repeated, so
keep the file on the desktop of your mind. Let
revelations slowly unravel us.
I am broken, but I'm still here to sing.
*
What do you know of the iciness of
death? I have gotten previews of it,
and it's hard to sleep through. I'm in for
many years of this, invisible cell, the
sentence being life as it's lived on earth.
The sentence consumes the meaning of what is.
I won't live in television light, a
coward's escape from the secrets of the dark.
The earth twirls its gown of enchanted loam,
as green stems stretch searching for the light, and
I stretch in bed but fall back down into the
dream I was living, a phantom of night.
*
Stars millions of miles away punch through sky
and our filmy atmosphere. I'm in an
undershirt of shadow. My unfathomable
chest, how it sends out hooks into darkness.
Do not snip my lines, O Fate of scissors and
twine. I have so few connections, and it
is an endless winter night. This is what is:
my self, my ropes, my robes of darkness.
I'm not night's only pet. But she owns my “I.”
I, that fiction, will stay self-less in the now.
*
I dissolve, and my lips crack with praise.
Night's path is long, unwilling pilgrim. The
minute hand is only a sound. Dark
laps time up, hollows it out. Am I at
even the first milestone? I forgot, the
darkness has no measurements, exact
or estimated, but it has a center.
I will wait in the center of night, of
unknowing. O moon flower, star the
the earth, draw close the hungry eye!
I am promised nothing by the wild dark.
Door of the fleeting moment, let me in!
*
Blanket of night, wrap me. I am tired. The
midnight hour slips sleekly in, cat-like. A bell's
mouth opens, tongue of starlight, while the small
hours wait. They emerge from their secret cave.
The deep well of night offers up the
black pearl water of sleep. It is secret;
you won't remember songs from its cavity
of black holes and twin stars, of novas, of
the corridors of your own mind. The
night keeps it in her fist, tight as a nucleus.
*
Night is the first goddess, fertile. When the
world was her egg, smaller than a quark,
it cracked and Love fluttered out. The how
of the universe will always be hidden.
I want to stay in the now, in what is,
but it erupts with questions. Now is the
cruelty of nations, now is the sacred,
now is the first kicks of the quickening
of tomorrow. I invented the gown in
which I meet the day, gown of stained glass. The
ones who hear Death speak stay in the dark.
I ate the pomegranate seeds, behind
the veil of earth and its waters. The
concubines of Hades aren't visible.
I must have broken a pact with the world.
This poem is a golden shovel using lines from Danusha Lameris's “O Darkness” from Bonfire Opera.
Enjoy other posts by Mary Ann Honaker HERE.
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| Mary Ann Honaker |
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023), and the forthcoming Night is Another Realm Altogether (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, DIAGRAM, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, Tuskegee Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.
