Inventory of What Still Moves and 5 Other Poems (1st place in our Women’s Writing Contest)

Inventory of What Still Moves
Somewhere the lungs are still
doing their small, unremarked work.
Somewhere a pulse keeps its appointment
with the dark side of the wrist.
The hands have not forgotten
how to be hands. They open. They close.
They set down what is too heavy
and sometimes pick it up again.
The eyes continue their quiet labor,
taking in the crooked geometry of the room,
the patient light, the discipline of dust.
A thought passes through,
does not stay for its own name.
The heart keeps its old metronome
though nothing is listening for it.
The body, a field after winter,
still keeps a rumor.
Something in me is practicing
the simplest instruction:
breathe.
again.








The First Animal
Before the word,
heat.
Before heat, the lean.
Before the lean, the refusal to stay.
Something in the body began
to worry the dark.
Not a thought. Not a plan.
A wanting without a face.
The spine remembered it could be a road.
The legs remembered a grammar older than speech.
The mouth filled with salt. With yes.
I moved and the world answered.
That was the first agreement.
Hunger arrived like a small weather.
So did joy. It did not stay.
The heart learned a new tempo,
not for keeping, for breaking.
Whatever I was before
did not have teeth.
Whatever I am becoming
is learning how to leave a mark.








How to Cross Without a Door
There is a room made entirely of almost.
I live there.
The walls keep their distance.
The floor refuses its name.
Sometimes a window appears
where the body should be.
Sometimes the body appears
and does not consent to windows.
I practice standing
where the light thins.
I practice leaving without moving.
Every threshold asks for something.
Sometimes it is a memory.
Sometimes a weight.
Sometimes the old way the mouth makes I.
I step and the room steps with me.
I step and the room forgets how to be a room.
What I cross is not a line.
What I cross is a habit.
On the other side,
the air does not recognize me.
It will.







Learning to Carry a Name Again
I do not lift it all at once.
I set one syllable on the tongue.
I wait to see if it stays.
Some names are too heavy at first.
Some tilt the day.
I try on my hands.
They seem willing.
I try on my shadow.
It follows.
The mirror gives back a person
without insisting.
I learn the weight of standing
in a room and meaning it.
I learn the grammar of here.
When someone says come,
I find a body that can.











Field Guide for the Second Life
Notice how the morning does not hurry.
How it keeps giving you things
even after you stop asking.
Notice the body
is a patient animal.
It will follow a light
that does not promise.
Drink the water.
Stand in the ordinary weather.
Touch what is near.
You do not have to explain
why you are still here.
Some days open like a hand.
Some do not.
This is not a problem to solve.
This is a practice.