Christina Vega-Westhoff

SURGE INTO SUMMER

The day is a cascade of little daggers

They line the alligator’s still body

The beautiful mud distracts you

The dry traces of the tractor’s tires

Which crossroads through mist

The whiteout in the dance, sound so loud there is none

In the woods with falling leaves your footsteps or a bird

Before your scratched up sunglasses

If a feather or a dagger first feels between the teeth

If through the stillness you are eaten

Here is her celebration, grotesque

Butterfly wing creasing teeth butterfly wing

Creasing handmade girl costume creasing

Daylight pulled out from the covers

Your opera, alligator still as if nothing

No smashed up face of daylight, the way the earth dries

All you see swift tail erasing

The promise we are all erasing

BOUND HERE IN THE LEAVES AS THOUGH THE FACE AN INSTRUMENT OF DESIRE

The opening between worlds                   two bodies revolving

Green crush of ginkgo on the skin

Crush of limbs

Partitioned dependence

A stream of prayers stitched like little country flags

Folded at the back of a wallet

Set on the dashboard

Hitting every so often the beads hung from the rearview mirror

To say our bodies found in the wreckage of the survival

Our tree skin, our matching handprints

The ginkgo that grows still when all else was killed

Goethe: are we not one in many

If we are little traces of sunshine all yellow until the screen fades to                                                                                           gray

A gradual drip down           the pallet melting

Or the one speck there left

Gray with a little yellow, the survival seems a little more horrific

The deep grinding of the organs in disagreement with the body’s                                                                                      stress

The reminder of life if we piece it apart

And the birds strain their voices

Between thumb and forefinger, the history

Our facepaint, green smear

Who proffered, our disappearing feathers

UNDOING THE MOVEMENT

you hit rewind

and backwards we walk the circle

we with our threaded patience

you with the busyness of a straightened leg

layers of breath removed from the world

underneath you now our tangled bodies

reach. you knock the Russian dolls from the table

little one crying her one glazed tear

your reflection in it, we sail through

so you see us too, your hands twist

the wooden hollows, where we are buried

again and again until you let us walk away

you lift your finger from the button

so we are on our hands, our feet mourning the altar

crossed an arm laid still as offering

a pit of knee without tickle

and this miraculous lifting we do

so full so drenched in gold altar light

we carry your old world new world worshipping

one ironed-out map of ill set ink fading continents

the ballerina stretches over you picking up the dust

litter in regular time it is as if this takes forever

no regular time rose hips calisthenic feeder

it’s even this way not possible for you to trace or more so

CHARGING FORWARD WITH HEART LIKE BULL’S HORNS

Flipping the heart and holding the knees closely,

going into death, into the tomb until hung by the hips’ crevice

Pulled to the matte finish, limb-by-limb unraveled

Blink and you are in mourning

Woman with the lost child            Arched in grief, staring into hands,

Held only by hooked elbows         One slips,

the way grief will surprise the grieving

A single elbow left holding           The look outward,

the distraction from grief that overwhelms

A leg climbs over, arms weave through ropes,

body revolving to be held in cradled arms, the way one carries a                                                                                       child,

limbs sprawled until the body sunk and set within    To set asleep

Yet the climb, yet the lowering of self

Yet the seconds and the music setting

The body, liquid in its heat, remains

© Christina Vega-Westhoff

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