The Road
I have nothing to say to the man at the cross
in the road. My fingers are loose at my sides;
I will not point to the flowering thorn in his right hand
or the black-rotting pear in his left. He knows
my name; let him keep it. Let him eat his own
fucking pear. I donโt need his road under my feet.
These brambled thickets are road to me,
this moss-bitten rock. The cornfields under
this storm-blue sky, the thieves stealing through them.
The scarecrows, the fruit trees, the beggars
asleep at their roots. This rain-thick air belongs
to no one. This old man insisting, rain slipping down
his face, down his outstretched knuckles into the mud,
is just another turtle dove seeking a knife.
Left
The jaws of the beast are closing
behind me. And I am not inside of them.
I am an open nerve in the grieving
light of day. God. I donโt know the motion
of my limbs, outside the darkness of
that mouth. I donโt recognize my faceโs
shape when the sun hits it.
Here is my shadow
quivering in the grass: here is what remains
of that darkness, and my place in it, ripped
like a miscarriage from the womb.
There is a hole in the beast, shaped the same,
where this scrap of darkness left it.
There is a shadow made of light.
We Were Wives
Wounds do not close
in the outer darkness.
We remain
glistening raw.
Throats hoarse, aching
jaws. They say
it is from the screaming, but I
cannot remember.
โ
They shave our heads,
make uniforms
of our nakedness.
The hair
does not grow back.
โ
We march in soldiersโ
faceless, whip-slashed formations;
we bow like cattle, docile
under the yoke; we
bleed.
โ
Across the darkness, I see
your freckled face, white
as a candle.
I do not know you
anymore.
Your cavernous eyes
do not leave mine, and we move
in unbroken rhythm
toward one another.
โ
We march, gaunt bodies shoulder
to shoulder, your scraped knuckles
parallel to mine.
You hum an old melody
under your breath. It drifts,
blank as snow, from the nameless
space beyond the river.
I cannot remember
the words.
โ
Clumsily, like a childโs
first kick in the womb,
I take up the counterpoint.
Jane Hahn lives and writes in the Midwestern United States. Janeโs poems have appeared or are forthcoming inย Palette Poetry,ย Vast Chasm Magazine,ย Orca,ย Detroit Lit Mag,ย Concord Ridge, andย Theophron, among others. More can be read atย janethegrey.wordpress.com.
