keeping the home safe keeping the plot—sever
divine recollections—nature is
all imagination—a knife (always a knife)electric eel
some fruit to peelsome formless faith—a knife
to open the coconut a pomegranate
a knife-blade to explore the wreck
a knife to vicious those blood-loving bats in all their viciousness
a knife-blankcannot recollect when it belongs (it’s all in pain)
a knife-stillloaded still roaming the seasstill hunting the golden doe
taking my clothes off i fold myself in front of her
lay my lips to her hooves my neck to her nose her teeth
ask if she will hide meor take me back into the sea
do not she saysi will not
renounce my knife for a blanket
nor forget my ordinary fearof course
there will be a time to eat
do not be tardy
desiring bodydevouring body
green great islando sanctuary
do not gape! i live
anxiouslyo hollow
hadesdisaster unburies
alli eat
every dayi am human
i do sorrow
always it’s fear me
revere me
worship mestupid
love!stupid beauty!
hasty! so very hasty
i dreamso smittendark named
destiny seizes grandmother
carries her offterrified
i hear her cry out for
her mother her kin
but for her mother most often
i leave this mistletoe for mother
i surrender
the worldall its worldly ways
my bravenessdeep
rooted and animal
these wounds
i inflicted on myself
these are mine!
lightning!rescue
or ruin!mother
your strict white blossoms
my own shelter
into my thigh brother
tattoos my body whole
tap tap tap
a shieldpoison
from the jaws of cerberustap tap
tap centipedefish
sphinxes’ riddle—refrain
renews itselfthe art of respect
renews itself—renews
a chimera’s wetrubylustwine-dark—tap
tap—we emerge
healed from salted water
we begin—we begin: who
who wishes to walk
with me will prove
already too late
i hung all the mistletoe
i speak unsaid password—tap
tap tap
i thirstthe whole
bird’s lifea wildness
of dawni score
the palm of my foot with a stone
set the stone on an altarsharp
definitiongrandmother
welcomes all righteous dead
i give tangerines for my fortune
hear my voice!
see my face!taste
for the first time my mouth!
unblind!
END NOTES & DEBTS (OF LOVE)
These spells are directly in response to, and in some cases use the language of, the following fellow casters: Alice Notley, Anne Waldman, Gertrude Stein, Marianne Moore, Robert Hass, Sophocles, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, HD, Mina Loy, Homer, Robin Blaser, W. H. Auden, Adrienne Rich, Djuna Barnes, William Carlos Williams, T. S. Eliot, Kathy Acker, Dylan Thomas, Naoko Takeuchi, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Euripides.
LEIA PENINA WILSON
is an afakasi Samoan poet hailing from the Midwest. Her work has appeared in Dream Pop Press, Split Lip, Birdfeast, Bombay Gin, Powder Keg, and OmniVerse. She is the author of i built a boat with all the towels in your closet (and will let you drown), winner of the 2012 To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize.
Splinters Are Children of Wood Page 4
