Tacey M. Atsitty

Sonnet for My Wrist

I tend to mistake your ribs for a hand-towel,
it hangs on a nail above the washbowl, the hand-towel,
ripped. There’s something wearing about the end curve
of thread. When I sleep I keep my palms open. Verve:
we were lovers in a field of gray. In Navajo, we say something
rote: I’ll radical when you hurt me something
close, even you waft— it’s best I tether, forget fly-aways
I plucked. My bones, they lay, to me, like fray. Like gaunt:
I don’t crawl back for fragments, even a spinal cord
of sinew— it’s not going to close. You rope
me from stray to grip: it’s all for naught. I’m born
for my father, Tangle People. Our mouths in webs:
tonight my wrists part, and you chase my insides
until they dangle into pieces.

Chafe

For someone husky, like me, it’s grained
at the inner thighs. Like rubbing a corn tassel,
between your thumb and fingers until it looses.
Or even just bumping it with a thick stick, it loses
pollen when it’s time. I know how stalks loosen:
I’ve seen Dad tie them when they’d lean too far,
almost to the ground. Their brace roots exposed
from wind or too much water. Their gentle rustles
in wind or breath, their deep bends at the knees.
Once they depended alone on rain, once they sprouted
silken, firm—closer we are to being round—
until the turns of girdling. Until the drop to humus,
no longer embarrassed at such a thin weave:
legs—skin—leaf—limb—

Round Our Wrists
for First Man

We swing like shawls about the shoulders of brides,
spread open in a field of snow. Though it’s just yet fall,
leaves bob red, foretell the absence of voice at eventide.
Once we sat in the current of a longhouse, lolled
in memory of a stew that warmed an ice monster. I raked
the story for your elbow and warmth: a message so petty.
Answer: I missed you when you left to carve a snow-snake
tunnel. Upon throwing, my tendon caught in the eddy
of creation. I could no longer lift logs to stack,
this was love in the saying: I could only follow your collar
in snow so far. (Bark I braided round our wrists round back).
One of these days you will find me under the white—
where autumn floats, rounding out the soles
of our feet, where the arcs of our breaths hold.

Out of Star

Float in to apologize, the first and easiest—our hands
To purge the pulse I felt right here, on my tongue
In the buds of each petal, the pillowcase I hand-stitched
He said he’d use it to pass through clouds on his way
One morning, he buoyed me with his tide and rock
Like something out of a summer blow along the shores
Or a boy that winds through Russian Olives at sunset, I’ve seen
I’ve floated that river over and over and back into child
The morning I drove from the sun, then walked into it
How could he not feel this whir for him, when I lifted his couch
Inside out, and even when I uttered every mourning, at every rill
For every watercourse that never turned out, in voice nor text
Why, in the final sunrise of our breaths, could he not see the still
As gold riffed from my eyes into his—

A February Snow

I get like this when it precipitates: fall
like salt. Muscles in my back tear

to the point of floating, bearing
flakes. They come heavy now,

lacking grace, exposing the weight
my collarbones carry. The wind

can only lift so much with its song:
snow is a blessing; its color

amplifies silence, so you can hear
every crunch or offering of self:

a sugar cookie wrapped in napkin.
I thought I knew love in every drag

of the tongue across icing, sparkle
in glaze, thought I went wading

into stars, pulling my dress up
to my knees— Alas, all that’s here

is a field of snow & a napkin to cleanse
my lips of any leftover sweetness.

I ate that cookie for days, until I fell
brittle. It’s the time of year when I sink

into my armchair, into threads
of branches gone bare. It’s tough to tell

in this scene if it’s birth or dying
time. All I know is it’s the season

when wind comes crying, like a baby
whose head knocks a pew during the passing

of the sacrament, that silence—
her long inhale filling with pain