Forthcoming in Vestiges_05: Lacunae
Loss
There was only one loss, but it was resourceful,
shadowed itself,
loss stalking loss, warm between the thighs.
Loss leaned its big head back in relief
against itself, leaned back against its own standing
figure, the one who stood behind,
its furry cranium
lodged in the groove between breasts.
Loss’s fertility
as cell by cell it twists
into division, sacred
to itself, amid only itself.
Loss’s self-replication a problem
of perspective or anatomy.
Were it an incursion
into darkness where one
loss kept its eyes open.
The other perceived with its
lids closed.
Or loss unable to ejaculate into
its gap,
unable to rest its head, ever,
onto its waiting arms. Loss
holding up its own weight
at variance with itself:
a snoring ghost
or a beautiful spare armpit that emitted no smell even
into the knotting of passion.
But loss was no list, its attributes
simple though
metamorphic. One thing
could be another, always. Not death,
but death.
Loss betrays itself with attention,
as sound transmutes with echo.
The itch in the crotch as it heals
from its friction.
Was it
loss? Was it, after all,
loss belonging to itself, loss
a perspiration lapped on
the tongue and reincorporated into the body?
Hereafter
Is not a place,
but a creature
waiting.
Inarticulate, expressive, starred
with fur
that dishevels.
The hereafter is not without
pain because
its mute claim is upon us.
Smell of pelt, yearning in
a creature,
no heart but a pulpy bell
that refuses to move as we
diverge from its
yearning unrung.
Leaving filaments of itself
in air or
anything that moves.
Making presence so
unlike itself, creature’s
creation is supple tissue
of lung
until we acquiesce to its
sense, delivered
to the security of
what breathes.
Scale
Belief, like climbing,
erodes its own surface:
what grows from the countenance
into the face.
Her translucent beard like antennae
protects her from the rock face.
Chin jut.
Rock twitch and crumble.
To make the way in the way out—
Something small on its four human legs scents forward.
Up from the earth grow whiskers, a recess, memory with soft dirt mounded
alongside it.
—
Elizabeth Robinson is the author of several books of poetry, including Apprehend, a winner of the Fence Modern Poets Prize, Pure Descent, a winner of the National Poetry Series, and On Ghosts, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry. With Jennifer Phelps, Robinson co-edited Quo Anima: innovation and spirituality in contemporary women’s poetry, published in 2019 by University of Akron Press.