I go right through that opening, pulled
\nby the howls. The stars shine
\nlike hooks over the flat land.
\nIn the dark a cactus touches my arm.
\nWhat did I do<\/i>? What have I been Before?
\nGot up from the bed inside, from the night,
\nnude, opened. I opened the door & looked.<\/p>\n
The moon was like an actress,
\nwarming the unsaid
\nwords with white, cool glances.
\nWhat hour is this
\nin the mind, what is that
\nyear always going
\nahead of me like a siren on a rock,
\nlow then high,
\nsanctimonious, snickering,
\nsoftening the mouse-tall corridors of psyche
\nwith yellow light.<\/p>\n
The few times I remember,
\nas a girl, doing this. Getting up to walk
\nlike the dead. Going out of the house,
\nsoundless with my childhood
\n& the woman twisting
\nbeneath the vellum of her
\nstillness, bare-footed in the bliss<\/p>\n
of a waking dream,
\na woman opaque as wind light,
\nscratching the limbs of sycamore
\n& catalpa, thinking
\nof nothing but the water she is,
\npouring out
\nover the ground in an unknown place,
\nfollowing the mind\u2019s gleam
\nlike a cinder.<\/p>\n
Cacti grazing hip-stalk, mosquito,
\nnightbirds, jazz. The mule deer.<\/p>\n
I bathed in the tears of the coyote,
\nI listened beneath the water,
\nunstitching my skin, & folding it
\nover the ledge of every word.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve ever been. Used, repeated,
\nrevised. I\u2019ve been that.<\/p>\n
I bathed in their shaggy tears.
\nThe distance in the mind,
\nnearly planetary. Celestial in its narrow blossom:<\/p>\n
the brain stem, the spine, the ticking hammer
\ncrowned by nipple, brown fig.
\nI\u2019m too far to see
\ntheir slanted shapes.<\/p>\n
Gander-pimpled, my skin
\nsqueezes its mouths closed. Ecstatic, stellar,
\nthe stars burn through their net, fall
\nfrom the rim of cinders, burning.<\/p>\n
Brightness in the dark, please
\nbelieve something.<\/p>\n
I turn into every shadow I\u2019ve ever envied,
\nstare at them until they form another woman.<\/p>\n
I touch her shoulder of flames. I pull her
\nwaist of night toward me. We rock above
\nthe howls of the tribe. The coyotes
\nmove off, answering the hunger,
\nthe syncopated swing
\nof brush & self \u2013<\/p>\n
torture, the embrace of two
\nmotherless women, pouring blood
\ninto a basin of memory.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"REG.12](\"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/REG.12-1.png\")
Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and visual artist. Her forthcoming collection, Lighting the Shadow, will be published by Four Way Books in 2015. Currently, Griffiths teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn. Please visit: www.rachelelizagriffiths.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I go right through that opening, pulled by the howls. The stars shine like hooks over the flat land. In the dark a cactus touches my arm. What did I do? What have I been Before? Got up from the bed inside, from the night, nude, opened. I opened the door & looked. The moon [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[122],"class_list":["post-2749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-the-gods-must-be-crazy-by-lori-field"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2749"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2764,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2749\/revisions\/2764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}