Alessandra Lynch

Excommunication

I promised myself
no more villages,
no star, not a picket or door,
and no investment in fire.

Drop out, moon,
skulk off, sun, said I then
the I shunned its self and scuttled
away, like a spider through fine skeins of rain.

Goodbye to all kinds of weather and many
iridescent undergrounds. Proper nouns, fall
flat, hard on scorched shore.
Adjective, deflate
the world. Synonyms, release your hold
on your brethren.

I won't have any more roadside:
I hereby release lythrum,
frog, lake, and footfall.
Thunderous or mute too, left in a stairwell
that lost its rungs and wood.
Unlock your grip, starnosed mole
Return to the hills, wolf and lilac
and all the signs of wilderness
furl. Feed no more blossoms
to the wind, abnegate the constellations,
negate the sea and what is left
of your world? What is left then?
And who is there to talk to
and how will you transport
once the bridges have been unshackled
and the rivers in drought but shimmering
blue as herring-gills on a shore of bones
beneath the gulls' out, out.

Even tarnish even empty or cold
must take their long walks off piers that have been
sent off, and you were casting out more than you could
number though you'd kissed each one. With a deep
infinity of skin and blood no longer, then how
will you call to the world
(without lips, heart, whispers, screams)
and with whom will you communicate
and what will you sing,
with no more mouths of anything,
no sinew, no alone.

Only here
you are part of the world, sound
itself without hold, loose as a history of the fall
and rise of wind, in a world
you had vowed never to mention
for its shroud and its blindness
falling on you as you banish.

History

Its tear coursed through our inelegant
wires. It darkened what had faded,
     mottled
the stiff ridge, trickled through
icy shackles;

hoarsened the language of chains, brining
our inmate-skin, rusting the fly-
screen, prowling for faces on glass

that kept slipping off.

It pooled under grave-chinned stones
and grew a hood over the draped swan
and blackened the breast beating madly for a kiss.

It had no word for pistol or war. It was
the glistening aftermath. In its wake,
smoke guttered to steamy sluice.

The tear heavied the lash of the bull,
matted bear-hide, curled the page, swelled
the book where red news met blue--
resolving the world as blur.

A cold soak to our wistful meadow. We began
trailing its lucid tail whereupon tear

stretched its silent cry and sidled through our skeletal
village. We could not unlock ourselves
for all its trembling glister,

its glinting spur too soft to do any more but course
and cool our anklebones, salting the root, not

reconciled with that fixed
smile of the world on which it dripped
without us.

---

Alessandra Lynch is the author of Sails the Wind Left Behind, published by Alice James Books. Currently, she teaches English and Creative Writing to high school students. She lives by an old stone library near many reservoirs and trains. contents | next