Drink
Ending
From Roots to Birds
From Water to Sky
Ghosts
Lily
Manufactured lawns dot the landscape
people only have time to mow, seed,
plant their touches of lilac, rose bush,
daisies that only bend to the sun.
Do they desire the touch of human hands to water
and pluck them, scatter their petals,
a funeral for people unburied, mistaken beauty
when picked flower pieces blow about
and suffocate us humans not used to beauty
in pieces or transient movement.
How we shift about, pour water into glasses
all day, we are so thirsty, we long for a stem
to drink up, to erase impurifications.
Look closely, what floats in us unseen baffles even
as our organs become buried in dirt.
We measure time with dust that accumulates on every surface.
Nano clouds, bits of thoughts pollute the television.
Technology is a constant reminder that rips us into bits
of static, white noise, intercepts a bird scream signal.
Sky warnings with black feathers rustle
and pollute my sight in the underworld.
I’m blind to the path but the man at the end
ferries me across the ink-stained river whispering
you think I’m a god but really I’m the character that
can see the only way out. I see open doors
cracked to let the stories in. Words, sludge,
under this boat, the souls cry terrible sounds.
We never mark the ending with a dog ear or receipt
but it’s what we most remember.
Through roots in dirt, a smile drifts
to the service of the aging tree.
How it encompasses every tree,
maple, pine, willow.
Night branches strike to connect, waver, unsure
what the dark sky tries to message us shut in from
the stars, the natural light, oxygen.
At midnight, to say boredom would be a fallacy
to the feelings incomplete and wounded.
Limbs and voice overshadow the fierce crows,
the gentle orioles.
What we need teeters,
those birds on fences ready to cry,
frozen tiny monuments,
the wings bridge from earth to air,
the beaks open: we watch them fly.
This hard deluge orphans me, wet skin, dry mouth
under high puddles.
I try to escape the train
of drips that suffocate my organs.
My arms reach into the source
of contention, it ripples through
my torso until sparrows echo the mist in my body,
lifting me into the pine tree, a slight breeze
contains voices from the past
but the wind carries me to the future.
I look down at my past self reeling
for someone to understand, to push
out of my limbs and teeth, to rake the earth
so that what shudders is baffled, the sound inside
reaches for the dead in the sky.
They say poets write too much about ghosts
but every night they come, black smudges
become lucid faces, spiraling voices inside.
I cannot tamp down wavering electricity
laying full specters across my body, a place
grounded in the elements, stories haunted
with air and earth strangle me.
Worms from the forest slide in under windowsills.
They crawl across me like a canvas of skin that paints
my skin in dirt, leaves cover my eyes, fingertips tap like twigs.
A foot soldier drums for a cause, his legs and arms ache.
Outside the door, nightmares of battle
drag across the ground to me, baffled
every time.
The spring lily lays in the sun,
ripped from the ground,
orange roots bright,
the girl wants to name it
as she feels silky petals
between tiny fingertips.
The thin strings of the flower vocal cords,
the act of naming
picks at the silence of nature.
All the good names
hide underground, afraid
to expose the curve of letters,
the O and B bent away from the sun,
the soil is a solace,
worms churn and beetles strut,
filtering the lily is frail
and strong at the same time,
this is so much life,
but not enough to lift us
from the eroded soil
we gather the life dirt like children,
scooping tiny hands inside.
Jennifer MacBain-Stephens (she/her) went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in Iowa where she is landlocked. Her fifth, full length poetry collection, Pool Parties is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2023. She is also the author of fifteen chapbooks and enjoys exploring how to blend creativity with nurturing the earth. Recent work appears in The Westchester Review, Cleaver, Dream Pop, and Grist. She is the director of the monthly poetry reading series Today You are Perfect, sponsored by the non-profit Iowa City Poetry. Find more of her work at http://jennifermacbainstephens.com/.
Sarah Lilius (she/her) is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Dirty Words (Indie Blu(e) Publishing 2021) and six chapbooks including GIRL (dancing girl press, 2017) and Traffic Girl (Ghost City Press, 2020). Some of her publication credits include the Denver Quarterly, Court Green, Fourteen Hills, Boulevard, Massachusetts Review and New South. Her website is sarahlilius.com.
