Dear Maker,
Under my body’s din,
a hum that won’t quiet,
I still hear what you’ve hidden
in all the waves of sound:
each bead of pain
that buries its head
like a black-legged tick,
intractable but mine
to nurse or lure with heat.
Please, tell me
what it means that I’ve grown
to love the steady sound
of so many kinds of caving in,
buckling down, the way
a body gives itself away
like a sullen bride or the runt
who couldn’t latch? I know I’m just
a hairline crack the music
leaves behind. I love
the music, though I can’t keep it.
Copyright © 2019 Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison. Used with permission of the authors. This poem originally appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Winter 2019.
Susannah Nevison
Susannah Nevison is the author of Lethal Theater (The Ohio State University Press, 2019) and Teratology (Persea Books, 2015), the recipient of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. With Molly McCully Brown, she is the coauthor of the forthcoming In the Field Between Us (Persea Books, 2020). She teaches at Sweet Briar College.
Molly McCully Brown
Molly McCully Brown is the author of Places I’ve Taken My Body (Persea Books, 2020) and The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded (Persea Books, 2017), winner of the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. With Susannah Nevison, she is the coauthor of In the Field Between Us (Persea Books, 2020).