Poem to Translate the Poems

posted Feb 28, 2012

The woman is my own regret.
The children are my friends,
how they cannot reach, or save
me. The birds are my eyelashes,
the wolves are my hands. Things
are making sense now. I write
my loved ones into organs
trapped inside apothecary jars.
I name the wicked beautiful
because that is what I am.
The blood is always my hunger.
My body, death. The stones mean
everything stays. Or repeats.
Raspberries and lemon rinds
tell how small and wretched
I’ve become. Boulders are
the weight of his leaving.
The horse is a dead family
member, someone old
whom I barely knew. Blade
is how he could have killed me
but instead I laughed. Each
cage is a love poem I don’t
know how to deserve. Bowls
just sound good in my mouth.
The things I write to fill them
are pieces of my dying. You
is almost always me.
Walnut shells safeguard
my lovers who are shrinking.
When something dies
it’s my mind. When something
soars, my mind. When something
is trembling, screaming, or trying
to jump in a river, my mind.

Jeanann Verlee is the author of Racing Hummingbirds. A former punk rocker who wears polka dots and collects tattoos, her work has appeared in such journals as The New York Quarterly, Rattle, FRiGG, and kill author. Racing Hummingbirds earned the Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal for poetry. She curates the Urbana reading series at Bowery Poetry Club in New York City and is a poetry editor for Union Station.

Verlee’s poem “Unwriting You” also appears in this issue.