Two POEMS
Reyzl Grace
Seals and Olives
—for E. R. Shaffer
As you tune the guitar, I lie on your bed,
watching your fingers climb the neck
like a mount of olives (with such devotion
do I follow you)—each peg
a protrusion of flint from the hillside,
each finger tasting of salt.
God knows what I expect.
To be caught up in clouds like the tones
that rise to meet the tuner’s note?
As a child, I could not match pitch—
could not hear two sounds
catch and fall together like waves.
When you play “Angels and Seagulls,” I remember
the fingers that tucked me into the hollow
of so many wings, the bronze
light that wrapped the steel cores
of halos and gave brightness to their whispers.
I didn’t understand then
how the angels bartered with the waters, granted
flight as a mercy—a commutation
to exile for a Cancer that couldn’t swim
and heard nothing in shells. So much
has changed, and now I hear the silence
of the sun, the music of the spheres.
And you do not sing like an angel, but brim
like the ocean—a voice without hollows.
Nowhere to hide. When you sing, you wrap me
like wings furled close to the body,
press me like the chill of the sea on diving
feathers. Gulls come back from this,
but I am no gull—no angel. I am different—
born to the waters. When you play, I sun
in the bronze of your strings like seals and fruit.
When you’re gone, I cry like the sea—an effusion
of salt on stone in which like devours
like, olive falls to earth.
Curtal
—for E. R. Shaffer
When I lay my hand to your chest, your heart buds
like a blossom looped to its own beginning, a cutting
of time from which endless gardens grow, and mine . . .
Mine falls apart in unyoking sparrows
by twos and fives until it is emptied, transparent
to infinite light. When I lift my hand, your lips
and limbs are full of birds—a song that nests
in roses without number. Let God count
my hairs and my days, but not what is left in my chest
when you are gone. Let it be zero. Nothing
else could be enough.
—for E. R. Shaffer
As you tune the guitar, I lie on your bed,
watching your fingers climb the neck
like a mount of olives (with such devotion
do I follow you)—each peg
a protrusion of flint from the hillside,
each finger tasting of salt.
God knows what I expect.
To be caught up in clouds like the tones
that rise to meet the tuner’s note?
As a child, I could not match pitch—
could not hear two sounds
catch and fall together like waves.
When you play “Angels and Seagulls,” I remember
the fingers that tucked me into the hollow
of so many wings, the bronze
light that wrapped the steel cores
of halos and gave brightness to their whispers.
I didn’t understand then
how the angels bartered with the waters, granted
flight as a mercy—a commutation
to exile for a Cancer that couldn’t swim
and heard nothing in shells. So much
has changed, and now I hear the silence
of the sun, the music of the spheres.
And you do not sing like an angel, but brim
like the ocean—a voice without hollows.
Nowhere to hide. When you sing, you wrap me
like wings furled close to the body,
press me like the chill of the sea on diving
feathers. Gulls come back from this,
but I am no gull—no angel. I am different—
born to the waters. When you play, I sun
in the bronze of your strings like seals and fruit.
When you’re gone, I cry like the sea—an effusion
of salt on stone in which like devours
like, olive falls to earth.
Curtal
—for E. R. Shaffer
When I lay my hand to your chest, your heart buds
like a blossom looped to its own beginning, a cutting
of time from which endless gardens grow, and mine . . .
Mine falls apart in unyoking sparrows
by twos and fives until it is emptied, transparent
to infinite light. When I lift my hand, your lips
and limbs are full of birds—a song that nests
in roses without number. Let God count
my hairs and my days, but not what is left in my chest
when you are gone. Let it be zero. Nothing
else could be enough.
Reyzl Grace is a lesbian writer, librarian, and translator whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Room, Rust & Moth, So to Speak, and other periodicals. Currently a poetry editor for Psaltery & Lyre, she lives as an expat in Minneapolis with her novelist girlfriend, arguing over which of them is the better writer. (It’s her girlfriend.) Find more of her at reyzlgrace.com and on social media @reyzlgrace.