Voice Memo [anyway/despite/even if]

What draws you out again is your sisters’ weeping, 

your friend saying your name       a shadow’s repetition that slips, almost imperceptibly, 

from its angles You become a tree, 

blurred & listening A medallion leaf 

flutters in digital wind, cells flower like secret nightbloom       

What did you choose Part of your fate is like a fig, 

backlit & glowing Which part can you love Blue hydrangea

Unknowing suns sunk in heavy tissues

The part bewildered & thirsty,       

        alchemical Nests of hair,

auburn in your palm 

Not exactly a repetition of sunsets or cottonwood tufts dyed red

by evening     

Where is the beginning Your own footfalls, displaced,

surrounded in locust drone The beginning is anywhere these wounds

seal & mark you, anywhere you dissolve & crawl

To change one grimy detail

of your shirt or your hometown is to miss

a line of inquiry that leads you down an aisle 

to a vanishing point perspective       a mouth in the rock where you follow yourself 

& experience your own name as a presence 

a premise an expectation:

The baby teeth the gingko fans the olive oil like liquid glass in the glass bottle

the raincloud the stray hair under a microscope the singular music in a voice

the sentient fact with antlers       Again       You would be married to weather

CORY HUTCHINSON-REUSS

Cory Hutchinson-Reuss is a poet whose work can be found in Slice, Zone 3, Crazyhorse, the Offing, wildness, and the Missouri Review online. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Iowa. Originally from Arkansas, she currently lives in Iowa City, where she participates in the Writers’ Workshop at Oakdale Prison and serves on the Advisory Council for the non-profit Iowa City Poetry. She is also a poetry reader for the Adroit Journal