Pot is legal. I love my boyfriend.
- Jessica Abughattas
I sometimes like to lie
down on the floor
in the kitchen, the watchtower
that is my body opened
like a secret in a mouth, a house
with a brain inside.
It doesn’t make sense, I know.
Across the floor like petals,
we make our meeting-place.
You put on a bad British accent
and say, “Softest of mornings,
hello,” thick with a sax-
ophone’s syrup as though
there is no crisis.
What could be better than to stand
here hungry, domestic
as a plate? As I open my mouth
to speak, I keep hearing
tree talk, water words,
and I keep knowing
what they mean. I must
get this exactly, I want to
make it clear: These trees are
my bones, but my eyes
are so deep-set
in my head, I can’t see
the forest from here.
This is trivial, or nothing.
I quietly call to you and you
come and hold my hand and I
say, “Does the breeze need us?”
“Did you say the wind?”
you say with both hands on
my chest. You like the feel
the weight, the heft of it
in your hand. You are so dramatic,
I say in a language
my father never taught me.
“Where do you think
the soul is?” I say instead
aloud, surprised,
and Brain says, Christianity
is a religion built around
a father who is only a god if you learn
to starve. And then I trouble
my brain into a blender then hand
you a cup.
We sit in silence
in the face of our questions
long, radiant minutes
quietly, your hand
in my hand, hand
on my stupid heart,
just agreeing to be
still. I press my body into
your body and eventually feel
interesting and not like a chair.
Each time you breathe
a birch tree grows, propelled
by a heart of sea anemone.
This is how worship begins.
A cento, this poem is composed solely of lines from 41 other poems, detailed below:
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Ada Limón, “The Quiet Machine”
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Jada Renée Allen, “Interior”
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Phillip B. Williams, “Hunter”
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Dana Levin, “A Skull”
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Li-Young Lee, “I Loved You Before I Was Born”
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Torrin A. Greathouse, “Song”
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Muriel Rukeyser, “Song”
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Mark Bibbins, “One afternoon you fixed me”
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Mary Oliver, “Softest of Mornings”
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Safia Elhillo, “Self Portrait With Yellow Dress”
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CAConrad, “Altered After Too Many Years Under the Mask”
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Ellen Bass, “Cold”
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Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Grown-up”
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Shara McCallum, “Passage”
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Lucille Clifton, “Breaklight”
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Denis Johnson, “Upon Waking”
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Ama Codjoe, “Becoming a Forest”
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James Cihlar, “The Way Words Echo in Our Heads”
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Cameron Awkward-Rich, “Something About Joy”
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Sharon Olds, “True Love”
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Ellen Bass, “The World Has Need of You”
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Lewis Grandison Alexander, “Japanese Hokku”
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Meg Day, “10AM is When You Come to Me”
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Christopher Kondrich, “Common Things”
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Aria Aber, “Waiting for Your Call”
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André Naffis-Sahely, “The Other Side of Nowhere”
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Kim Addonizio, “Body and Soul”
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Leah Naomi Green, “Origin Story”
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Ishmael Reed, “Skin Tight”
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Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin”
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Danez Smith, “I’m going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense”
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Noor Hindi, “Breaking [News]”
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Safiya Sinclair, “We Sit Silent in the Face of Our Questions”
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Wendy Cope, “On a Train”
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Cameron Awkward-Rich, “Meditations in an Emergency”
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James Crews, “Self-Compassion”
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Amy Lemmon, “I take your shirt to bed again…”
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Wendy Xu, “This Year I Mean to Be an Elephant”
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Jeremy Radin, “Blueberries”
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Sara Eliza Johnson, “Parable of the Unclean Spirit”
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Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, “Worship”