Three poems by Sara Moore Wagner
surrounded by fluffy animals, bears and dogs
with sparkle eyes. She clutches the blanket
my sister made for her before she was born,
each corner stitch so precise.
My daughter says what does it mean
to die? And I say it’s like being born.
She says will I be back in your belly? Back as an egg?
Will you carry me again, will I come out in your arms
like I did? And I want to say yes, but I say listen,
birdy, it’s like this: A flower comes up out of the ground
like the head of a child. It’s cut out or it falls back
into the dirt in spring—and she stops me to ask
about the cutting off, how if something is cut off
it can still live. How if a man can take a gun to the base
of so many people in the street, just like a gardener
takes a clipper to a bush, if we plant those bodies
again—where have they gone, mother. I am asking you
so I can give my daughter an answer that makes any
sense. And will her sky, will her womb be this American
sky, this American womb we were both birthed into.
Even now the teasel is choking out blossoms. Even now
the ivy snakes around her unused swingset. Even now
she’s got both arms around my neck and I’d like to believe
I might never leave this bed or her with her head
still wet with bath, so ready for the kind of sleep
you wake from. It’s our job to teach them how
to let go. How to let go. What happens
if I won’t let go.
Back when we were just friends, in one breath. Your breath was a siphon, was a canal, was a rabbit on hind legs
you’d suck a cigarette down to the butt
in the garden, and I thought you might
take me like that, down to the end
of what I’m supposed to be: burning
and squeaking and useless.
Now, I watch you wake every morning,
watch the light come over your pores,
the way our daughter finds a porous
rock in the garden and calls it meteor,
and you say yes that’s right. How
your father always kept you held
out to the sky on his open palm.
He’d say look at what you could be—
Still, you chose me with your hand
so soft in mine. You never made me
stay, just laid out my best dress, folded
into the shape of a nest, just filled
my cup with blueberry tea. Even my hair
is different with you. It’s finer. It hangs.
I’ve learned to name the rocks, too,
to watch the sky for stars, to see you
for what you are. And yes, I am drawn
into you as if into a lung, but you won’t
let me love you like that.
Sometimes we make the rice red,
let the beef bleed red onto the china,
we paint the front door red, we wall
our elders brick by brick into the red
pillars holding up the front porch,
and there, arms up in red sweaters,
their bones become foundational,
the red dire is a red gorge we go into
bare shouldered & it seeps even
into our eyes, which look rusted
now & our mothers say honey,
you must be so tired of creating this
imaginary world, hoping you’ll see
yourself in it, see the grandmother
whose bones pickle in all that red
clay, as the lake, as the sunburn,
as the child underwater, cheeks puffed,
hair alive in a current, finger to a crevice
where the sunlight seems to reach,
as a color, as a fire color, as a light
color, as red as your lips when you first step
out in it, hair still wet, body still wet,
a memory of a boat, and a man with a tired
light all around him, dark around the eyes—
that smile that means something
is about to happen just between
the thighs.
Fiona’s works can be found on her website and her instagram page.
