I must be far from men and women
To love their ways.
I must be on a mountain
Breathing greatly like a tree
If my heart would yearn a little
For the peopled, placid valley.
I must be in a bare place
And lonely as a moon
To find the graceless ways of people
Worthful as a flower’s ways,
A flower that lives for loneliness
And dies when beauty dies.
I cannot find music
On the tongues of men and women
Unless I hear their voices
Like echoes, silence-softened.
Their many words mean little.
Their mouths are blatant sparrows.
I must be far from men and women,
As God is far away,
To keep my faith with Beauty,
My heart sweet towards them,
And love them with a god’s tranquility.
From On a Grey Thread (Will Ransom, 1923) by Elsa Gidlow. This poem is in the public domain.
This loneliness encaged in me
That has no curious heart for life,
No ribald blood, no treacherous flesh
Nor golden wickedness of song,
This loneliness that prays in me,
Is it not somewhat like a nun?
See the clasped hands, the secret eyes,
The lips pressed close for fear of love!
What if I make her drunk one day
With wine or some unholy need
Then leave the cell door open wide––
Think you she might be tempted out?
From On a Grey Thread (Will Ransom, 1923) by Elsa Gidlow. This poem is in the public domain.
Which is to say that like a good theoretical objectified body, my identity was created not by me but by the various desires and beliefs of those around me. – Daniel Borzutzky My body is a small cave door it’s a slick whale a jubilant sea of tall grass that sways & makes its way across countries & lovers I love love-making I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in touch I have these breasts & some would want to come on hands & knees to worship them call me flower or desert Maybe I was only supposed to be stone or a baby eel long & layered a nun? I don’t remember ever saying yes just no I am searching for my own body not the one I was told is so I want to be always open like a canyon Maybe I was only supposed to be tree or temple In some circles I am just an open gate a sinful bauble Once someone said you are this & I never questioned it I am searching my own body for God or someone like her—
Copyright © 2018 by Yesenia Montilla. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 12, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.