talking about a revolution revolution
Milla van der Have
somewhere
a poet preaches paradise
and I fall again
call it
a tightrope
call it
too many moving parts
call it
watching a stranger pass
by your window
and know it is you, it
has always been you
❖
they called me leaf girl
for no reason other than
this resistance
said I was twig and they
were roots and therefore
different—even though
we had the same celluloid skin
❖
it starts in a room
morning welds itself
into the soft childhood shapes
of summer—of octopus
rodent pigeon—and the world
is still cross-eyed
and relentlessly yours
❖
in school we learned
to fold in on ourselves
and become still
little origami children
while all the paper birds flutter
I find one that blazes like a fire
call it my flaming heart
❖
somewhere
a poet says praise
even though their eyes quietly turn
into ash
❖
this time of year
identity presents itself
a narrow ledge
moving against
what will not hold you
and holds you
nonetheless
as if you’re falling
with your rescued wings
still tied to your back
❖
somewhere a poet
hands out ashes
everything threatens
everything these days
❖
again a room is a river
where we stroke a wild current
into submission
they made me into a cataract
watched me rage myself
into a sharp white downward
plunge
❖
yet all the animal names have breath
in them and sheer costumes
of light
❖
they called me leaf girl
for too often I was made
of tar and the depletion
of trees
I lost myself on stairs
in portraits and in strangely
stretched bodies of water
I turned nocturnal
breaking furniture
in bite-sized birds
mannequins
never as feral as they could be
❖
and what is resistance anyway
but the beauty of attention
of what escapes our
glittering touch
any revolution is manmade
turns our hands into mothered
restless things
❖
so tonight the poet
holds a fistful
of ashes
calls it sleigh-born
history
tries to make it
into what it was
before
their fingers
lose their touch
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