One Poem
FIRE WALK WITH ME
Day 7 (morning):
In this dream, I remember having the dream before.
When I wake, I attempt to record the dream in my diary, but
all of the pages are missing. Edges torn, tattered.
The still images of the dream collect and the future reels
flicker through me with a delicate balance between pleasure
and violence.
I’m a blonde girl;
I’ve always know how to ride it.
Day 7 (night):
I’m beginning to realize that it’s a different kind of world with this fire in it—
I leave the window open at night for you to crawl through and tuck me in.
Our empty language coalesces into touch, the not-speak crosses dimensions
before I catch its embrace.
The sensation of your fingers as they run delicately over my body—
Our alchemy is chemical;
this ancestral chemistry.
Day 6 (morning:)
The portrait I hung up on my wall changes, but I only notice after
my favorite color in it has disappeared.
The woman becomes transparent, an empty shape.
The most relentless part of grief is all that it disappears.
I’m not surprised;
The riddle of gender repeats itself each time.
Day 6 (night):
This bliss you leave behind in me is nuclear.
Day 5 (morning):
I suppose that when you look up from the bottom, anything could be God.
Maybe there, in Heaven, it’s always curtain call—always a pageant—
but never quite showtime.
Day 5 (night).
Wandering violets, wondering violents.
In this crisp autumn evening I understand their delights.
Day 4 (morning):
The truth is, I live for the pageantry—
when you’ve been in an eternal dark,
your eyes must eventually adjust.
At least somewhat.
Day 4 (night):
I’m rocking with D, I mean she followed me
all the way to the pink room.
In the pink room, anything could be love.
Topless on the billiard balls, the men deploy their sticks with their blue chalk tips
against my body.
No one can see the wreckage,
not even after the game has been won.
Day 3:
Omission.
.noissimO
O—
mission,
Oh.
Oh,
Oooh!—
Day 2 (morning):
I am child until this dawn, and then
I’m immortal, this half-heart of fire and gold.
This skin; this fear; this kin.
The moth that’s been resting on my hand flutters away, offering
a burn. Its circular shape, our twin flame, blistering.
Day 2 (night):
Salt and pepper; I season all my meals.
This night I give up, I mean this light—
I only understand pink once it deepens into red, like blood.
Men chase around the chalice until it becomes a chase until what
I’m willing to give everything up apart from the corruption of you.
The way light makes every image it flashes over into something new.
Christmas in July.
What is it you (or I) have to prove?
Day 1 (morning)
Drop me off by the green light, you better go fast, real
hard on red. You better go before I scream
or else the snow circle will reveal its entrance
and you, a punk your whole life, bad to the bone,
will try to make sense of its code. Honey,
life is a vortex of shifting dynamics;
The way we survive is not a pushing through
but a constant adjustment to its changing weathers.
I put on my little bikini,
I dance in the snow storm.
I laugh hysterically all coked up
cocking a pistol in my hand.
When you inevitably go,
I’ll give up my shape;
I’ll take on a new form.
Day 1 (night):
Black cup of joe. The mug will maintain the tar’s imprint.
Me and R on the train tracks, only my spirit is with her—a piece of it, anyway.
What’s difficult about being glamorous is that they portray us as trinkets.
Me with the ring, the cold Mermaid sing
that leads my body to the mill.
What else is there to give?
Is it my body, or is it the plastic?
What’s the difference;
The black lodge holds my heart.
I beg you to free me from this dream.
I beckon your manly body to come and take me.
Here, my moans ripple in reverse.
Hear, my moans slip and transverse a former landscape.
My mother will make dew with the former met,
eventually. I’ve spent it; I’ve used all my life force
and I reside in the red room perpetually.
What have I invited in?
You may as well have asked for it.
Oh, that’s right.
I did, diD, diD.
∩
Caelan Ernest is a poet living in Brooklyn, New York. They are a publicist at Graywolf Press.