megan merchant / poem

Day/Night

“Understand I need these fragments.

To tell it once is not enough.”

-Emily Skaja

Where did you sleep, in what temperature of light? 

What words erased when you woke? 

*

I can’t stop thinking about the way your sigh pin-tucks 

tined edges of dark. 

*

I read poems that are like ivory busts of women. Not everything 

can be thought through. A declaration of non-existence.   I’m here. 

*

Outside, cloud tangle.      Just enough winter-rain to lose traction. Unsettle. 

A fragment is not the same as an erasure. What isn’t said, isn’t yet. 

Give me time. 

*

A poem wrecks with tender mirrors.  

*

I’ve seen the way that fields can mimic the gesture of water in a dry season. 

A hidden depth. 

Acres of want. 

*

I frame you in tin. Tarnished green. How the dead bloom. 

What if all that lingers between us are words? A crate of plastic flowers in sun. 

*

The stained-glass windows here are faded, let in a solace of light. I whisper enough, 

enough, an argument with longing. 

*

I am making a map. I hang mirrors on the trees to catch a bent elbow here, 

the curve of my neck there. 

Each time, pretending. You. 

*

What beginning isn’t wild with possibility? Already fraught with its own unbecoming. 

*

Already fraught with its own unbecoming. What beginning isn’t wild with possibility?

*

Each time, pretending. You. 

I hang mirrors on the trees to catch a bent elbow here, the curve of my neck there. 

I am making a map.

*

I whisper enough, enough, an argument with longing. The stained-glass windows 

here are faded, let in a solace of light.

*

A crate of plastic flowers in sun. What if all that lingers between us are words?

How the dead bloom. Tarnished green. I frame you in tin.

*

Acres of want. 

A hidden depth. 

I’ve seen the way that fields can mimic the gesture of water in a dry season. 

*

A poem wrecks with tender mirrors.  

*

Give me time. 

What isn’t said, isn’t yet. A fragment is not the same as an erasure.

Unsettle.  Just enough winter-rain to lose traction.      Outside, cloud tangle.      

*

I’m here. A declaration of non-existence.      Not everything can be thought through.

I read poems that are like ivory busts of women.

*

I can’t stop thinking about the way your sigh pin-tucks 

tined edges of dark. 

*

What words erased when you woke? 

Where did you sleep, in what temperature of light?

---

Megan Merchant (she/her) is the owner of www.shiversong.com and holds an M.F.A. degree from UNLV. She is a visual artist and, most recently, the author of A Slow Indwelling (Harbor Publications) and Hortensia, in winter (Winner of the New American Poetry Prize). She is the Editor of Pirene’s Fountain. https://meganmerchant.wixsite.com/poet