Illustration by Bella Aldrete and Watson Frank
trigger warning: brief mentions of violence
this poem speaks of vessels
meaning i count ships on the sea by their absence
and enumerate bee flight.
there are errors, of course, and i annotate recklessly -
my first mistake will be assuming this is a poem, not a memory.
count the rest.
say: i feel like a stranger here. i want my own words. i want the street to turn into loneliness which is a
flood which is the maxim that wild horses will not speak to you / say: i fought a river and married your
urn; say: lace curtains swaying, roof-bound. the bed creaks under our weight / say: i am in love and
therefore mistranslated / say: my little darling, entrust your pleasures to the winds.
this poem speaks of knives
which are self-portraits of wounds, waxing crane claws.
and i am not the mainspring of its narrative, nor a soft goodbye
convincing you this is holy ground. i do not disseminate hagiography,
except if you’re the saint
and i salvation.
my second mistake is claiming the poem loves me back
which it cannot while i am in it.
count the number of times i am in it.
say: i surprise the ocean with honesty, open mouth sinking, tongue still tangled / say: i find your name
imprinted on stinging cells of passing jellies; say: wrap around me / say: the wrath of possession which is
our truth which is forcing your spit down my throat and calling it history / say: i burn on a heart-shaped
pyre.
i am not willing to be malleable, to fill the kitchen with delight
and delicacy. i love you only through mutual laceration.
i make another mistake.
can you conceive of me?
notes:
the line 'my little darling, entrust your pleasures to the winds' is from kristina milnor's translation of CIL
4.5296, a female homoerotic love poem from ancient rome surviving scratched into the plaster wall of an
entrance hallway in pompeii's ninth region
the line 'mutual laceration' is drawn from georges bataille's work guilty
eris sker (she/they) is a junior at columbia college studying comparative literature & society and anthropology. they like moon jellies. you can find them on their personal Instagram and their poetry Instagram.