Three poems by Heather Derr-Smith

Epigraph

I dreamt Mary Shelley gave me her lover’s heart
wrapped in paper    blood dried into shapes
like shadow puppets    behind the scrim   shine
the light beam  it on the screen    pay close
attention as it beats    In the back of testis
an epididymis   elongated mass of  tubes   all
the meaning we have to untangle         girls
grabbing you by the balls    fear    of those girls
how they roamed        you freeze
numb as an epidural     while down on the hard
sea floor fauna grow   hands and knees   you know
nothing as you plan your attack      the rock’s
epigenesis one mineral to another you cannot
destroy everything             
The earth will out live
you   rejoice   take my body and       turn it over
and unwrap it       O earth lay me     down
in the enclosing rock   your language will outlast us

Epoch

But these events only serve   to make a

X    eye grotesquely huge   can only encompass

the back of itself in sleep      not even grief

simply sleep     Christ’s apostles in the garden

where he lay weeping         she’s raring, bloody

now as a warrior horse    a parade of survivors

behind her in a rasorial daze     scratching

at the ground for food    rataplan of machine gun fire

the angels, rapporteurs            speechless now

at the catastrophes of our own making no need

for a jealous God              One last thing

to record      the water ouzels   walking

on the bottom of the river to hunt       they stand firm

against the current          to them      the water must yield

Terror praesentis

I knew by heart the sky, starlight, drone
Light or sometime silent whir, hushed as noon
When my mother sick slept in her room, sewn
To a garment of fevered dreams like runes
You toss on a foreign ground. Can I outrun
Their eye? Cameras capturing my face, sworn
To this frail country, the land’s daughter and sons
Who raise their fists among the bloodied thorns.
Who will remake this land, melt the hot guns
Into ploughshares? I know each headstone
Every name of every father, mother running
From bullets aimed from the eye above its zone,
Targets, shattered like stars into split bone
I will remain unbowed until I am none.