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The translucent claws of newborn mice
this pearl cast of color,
the barely perceptible
like a ghosted threshold of being:
here not here.
The single breath we hold
on the thinnest verge of sight:
not there there.
A curve nearly naked
an arc of almost,
a wisp of becoming
a wand—
tiny enough to change me.
Copyright © 2020 by Kimberly Blaeser. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 8, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
I.
Suffrage:
In late middle English
intercessory prayers,
a series of petitions.
Not the right—but the hope.
Universal:
applicable to all cases—
except those marginalized
and unnamed.
I.
living by your words
as if I haven’t enough of my own
ever
to make them stretch
that long distance
from home to here
from then to now.
and all the new words
i’ve ever read learned
or shelved so neatly
can’t explain myself to me
like yours always do.
sometimes that one gesture
of your chin and lips
my memory of
that sideways movement of your eyes
are the only words
from that language
i can manage
put things in their place
Don’t hurry to safety.
Each hour your flowered room grows smaller.
Everywhere at the periphery of vision
windows shatter into triangles
of mosaic light.
There in the lonely fragments
a youtube dictator
declares victory,
blood flattens and darkens.
The scent of rebellion
smoke fire and ash
all pungent in the still images
sacrificed to history.
Somewhere the flapping door of an overturned wagon
thumps steadily
in a deserted street—
echoes absent hands.