on loveliness
i read somewhere
that a group of ladybugs is called
a loveliness. and i wonder
what the person who gave them
that name (surely someone of at least
measurable humanity) knew,
or thought they did, about what love
—what kind, specifically—so embeds
itself in a thing that the thing,
subsequently, becomes an embodiment
of that love: the way river breaks into current;
the way trees make forest, simply
by standing closer to each other
than to anything else…
…by which I mean: i need you
to tell me which of my black spots
you find loveliest. which interruption
of my red feels most human
to the forest of your fingers; the current
you river into touch
along my breaking skin.
Copyright © 2024 Ariana Benson. Originally published in Kenyon Review, Summer 2024. Published with permission of the poet.
Ariana Benson
Ariana Benson was born in Norfolk, Virginia. She graduated from Spelman College and holds MA degrees in both poetic practice and scriptwriting, which she earned as a Marshall Scholar.
Benson’s debut collection, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023), won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the John Leonard Prize for Best First Book, presented by the National Book Critics Circle. A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, Benson has also received the Furious Flower Poetry Prize and the Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets.