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Islands of Contained LightFor years I've searched men's songs, pulled them out like fish out of a dark river, eaten them whole, swallowing my father's absence. I used to want to change lives, even if that meant destruction. But it was never home, how could it be? Home was in my head, a kernel of longing. I barely know that other woman now, the one who used feeling as drug. Everything slowed down so I could see each tendril of light. I followed the path that's left when water leaves the riverbed, searching one stone with a bloodline I could hold in my hands. Memory enters blood. So many I have left to their own lives, islands containing their own light now. I am left here to go down into that underground territory, the one I stand in with my rake. I write against the door's banging, every storm reveals tentacles of light streaming down into the dark breath of roots. |
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Issue #3, September, 1998 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.