Estrellada

Despite the hurtling far I go, a same

                                                         loneliness persists its constant hunt——

an old companion, it silvers its way into our still

                                                                        when the house is paused and

each object seems to tilt in mid-plummet,

                                                          each red egg a hatching star in my hair,

each surface of my life a border and singularity:

                                  the migrant heart sliced into petals by guitar string——

born on a cusp, my first cry erupts

                                                                         a strand of throated river rope

that hangs the crossing in a tissue of fog;

                                      in that valley, babies lift to midheaven in sleep, hang

above the deepening cleft, fractaling:

                                                               a concurrent unweaving as I weave,

the text an unraveling ghost-skirt

                                         ever-repeating its leaving and leaving and leaving;

                                  [singularity: misterio doloroso]

in age, after fate will have made an opus

                                                                              of every brutal abandoning

I will succumb to the hunter in the profound:

                                                 a gallant leap into a copse of pines, the beast

born split, each arrow pierces two beings:

                                                         in wound, the animal turns constellation;

the feminine, obscene.

From Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, 2017) by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal. Copyright © 2017 by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal. Used with the permission of the author.