Epistolary Cento

I'm going to hide behind language
where dead lichens drip
where only present tense survives,
a slow fire
or the shadows’ shuddering
through waist-high fields,
which is a memory of my past, which I give to you
in this letter,
as I try to leave you again.

˚˚

I’ve lain through animal days.
I think if I speak long enough
inside the belly of the horse,
I won’t get blood on the floor.

˚˚

The horse rears,
the night closes in like water over a stone
and my tongue is split
making a sound like it is enough that you exist
while I myself shrink.

˚˚

I’m trying to say what happened to us

I was a sheaf of wheat
I lay asleep under you
I hollowed myself into a cave
It happened like this, or almost

(here the letter breaks off)

˚˚

Maybe you are no one, like the night.

˚˚

It’s not that I am alone or that you are or why—
we love what we love,
to the bottom. And you,
you can believe me or not. 

---

notes:

With lines from Ai, Michael Burkard, Robert Creeley, H.D., Lynn Emanuel, Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Carolyn Forché, Vievee Francis, Sara Eliza Johnson, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Alejandra Pizarnik, Sylvia Plath, Tomas Tranströmer, and Jean Valentine

JESSICA POLI

Jessica Poli is the author of four chapbooks and co-editor of the collection More in Time: A Tribute to Ted Kooser (University of Nebraska Press, 2021). Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, The Adroit Journal, and Redivider, among other places. She is a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, founder and editor of Birdfeast, and Assistant Poetry Editor of Prairie Schooner.