1 poem
broken crown for lost girlhoods
imagine : cusp of fruition, little uterus
expels possibility with a logic ; instead
you are frozen, amenorrheic, no-one’s
wife ; you will walk ; preordained paths
cut thru woods of dysphoria & clearings
of undisposed clarity, opportunistic heists
& takedowns in the copse ; you will wish
you were never born at all some days &
it is here you die ; they will shake their heads
& say that you could have been the pride
of your family ; but you were a victim
of signal jamming, boy-lines and girl-lines
jangled in the stratosphere ; a girlhood
curdled like indifferent milk, like blood
//
lie down : tangle of vetch, the tiny bells
& fronds ; your body a socket, locked into
God ; in the distance, eyeshine of some unknown
mammal, dance of predator or prey ; nightfall
alights upon the star-dappled woodland
damask ; your teeth sink into duochrome
firmament ; the river & its hushed banter
with the rustling wind become a chorus
of adulation ; the open air cooling
around you ; you find yourself asking
author & architect for more time here
among the macroscopic radiance,
bent skyward into an auroral show ;
& you think maybe it is beginning to snow
//
stipple of fallow memories : these too
will fade ; a force majeure renders machine
-like exertion to survive past this point ;
you wonder if your mother knows ; you always
were a daughter brimming with catastrophe ;
your thoughts loosen like clock hands unwinding
backward thru hours ; you settle in wet ground &
count your breaths dissolving, as if you were
yoked to living ; when you were a young girl,
someone taught you to whistle in the dark
whenever you were afraid, so you emit ghost tones
until the searchlight finds you ; all your life
you will seek the kindness of strangers,
unspooling wild heaven with small fingers
//
in America : blinking bright futures
sit parallel to thruways ; bone-colored
brutalism & the waiting wilderness
juxtaposed in mirror dreams ; mock-orange
& blue larkspur, brilliant feral tendrils ;
trailside findings : creek, culvert, deer
sign ; you were never an equal in this
uneasy romance with your country
because you never knew which of you
was doing the courting ; a mountain tells you what
a road does or cannot ; America takes you back
thru flaxen fields of promise, leads you
to a ditch where you bear down to deliver
a stone ; & you are half girl, half river
//
you kneel to find, to stand ; he enters
& inhabits your body like prayer ;
like prayer, you are captive, torn asunder—
your body lies motionless below you
in an ever-patient bed of blades
of grass ; you fall to follow, understand ;
his belt sings like church bells, he is here,
the lord of hosts ; when he dismounts, you come
back to your body & rise from the green
earth a mother ; he leaves you & you cross
yourself ; you bend to kiss the silver-embossed
oracle, carved into the velveteen altar ;
those who doubt : press your fingers to the mouth
of the wound & believe ; o studded fruit of faith
//
these are some of your names : girl-child, endling,
fawn ; but he knows to call you his mourning dove,
your sweet husband forever ; you tread soft
earth with no blood-trail behind, train of white
tulle a gauzy shadow ; you meet him by
a cluster of erect crosses, due north
of the streambed ; he cannot stop shaking
his head ; your diaphanous gown sweeps low ;
the rings are in his coat pocket ; all you see
is him ; the whole forest fades ; he reaches
a hand to you & you see the way ahead ;
you both move thru the rural winter’s freeze
but you notice you cannot feel the chill
as he guides you down the calvary hill
//
you wake up wrapped in white linens ; your bed
feels new, alien ; the furnace sighs, pushing
heat thru the empty house, which seems bigger
than before ; in your father’s house, there are
many rooms ; you open your eyes & see
the walls covered with clocks, all stopped ; you feel
calmer than you thought you would ; the early sun
breaks thru the blinds & a hundred shafts of light
enfold you ; time to get up, you tell yourself ;
you listen to the kaleidoscope of sounds
outside : the distant chatter of red fox pups
at play, the waking wind rattling the drowsy
trees ; your skin brushed with the cool dew of day
as you walk thru morning’s blue-gold doorway—
Lane Fields is a queer, trans poet living in Boston and a student of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Lane's poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in places such as Hobart, Yemassee, Rust & Moth, and Tupelo Press's 30/30 Project.