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Three poems by Danielle Rose

Danielle Rose

imminent / credit: em
imminent / credit: em

aleister crowley summoned demons & all i get is this tarot telling me about how i am always in the wrong

i want to become a fountain / first still stone / then bubbling
water like seeping / like an underground stream that swells
beneath us / but i still lacquer myself in protections
like how a graveyard becomes an ocean / like how i launder
my filth & then keep scrubbing / what is a stain
but something we keep washing / because i want to become
my mother’s high cabinet / where she kept her gods
behind plastic containers / i just want to stop asking
questions about how i began / & flow
like a fountain / i can be still stone / i can be
the water / always gently rippling / i want
to write this poem like a means to become corrected
again & again becoming / another round of scrubbing 

in which i explain to socrates why i am bottling my secrets into a jar

it is how i can beg permission / to be the way sunrise is both the bedroom window & a way to open it wide / because this is difficult work / like climbing a mountain or falling out of love / & in my dreams i am a chunk of marble to be carved / but this is not a doorway that likes to open / i am meddling in dangerous things / this is a search for coalescence between heartbeats / & how to live with the things that make such demands of me / like choosing the color of my candor / or how ants carry their fallen / if i were a geyser i would just be quiet / bubbling at a murmur / but this is a rushing river & the rapids overtake me / with all this begging i have trouble breathing / i have trouble being a dollhouse when all the tiny furniture is broken / if my pleading were an anchor i could moor a ship / but i am akin to flotsam / perhaps i could be a sunken treasure & a forgotten maritime grave / when i write these poems i want them to circumvent this memory / to keep my secrets while also telling them / so when diotoma claims all acts of creation are poetry i just agree & remain quiet
 

on becoming a dovecote

when i think about dovecotes they are volumetric space
between wingtips / the gulping of chicks widening their beaks
into the air / & then they are air / because i think of my father
the first time he almost died / he had become a bed / a set of ill
covering pajamas / he was diminutive like two horseflies
fucking / & i know we need this space between us / so i do not
become a bed or a set of pajamas / there is that moment
when a father becomes bedridden / when they install metal rods
to strengthen a back that was broken / i was sixteen
& my chromosomes were burning

& my chromosomes were burning
into the air / & then they are air / because i think of my father
when i think about dovecotes they are volumetric space
to strengthen a back that was broken / i was sixteen
the first time he almost died / he had become a bed / a set of ill
between wingtips / the gulping of chicks widening their beaks
when a father becomes bedridden / when they install metal rods
covering pajamas / he was diminutive like two horseflies
become a bed or a set of pajamas / there is that moment
fucking / & i know we need this space between us / so i do not

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Danielle Rose

Danielle Rose is a poet whose work can be found in The Shallow Ends, FIVE:2:ONE, Sundog Lit, Pidgeonholes, Glass Poetry, and elsewhere. She studied with Carolyn Forché at Skidmore College and lives in Massachusetts. Her debut chapbook, at first & then, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. She tweets @danirosepoet.

Author: Danielle Rose Tags: poetry Category: Poetry August 2, 2019

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Comments

  1. Sam Silva says

    August 6, 2019 at 3:27 pm

    not just fluid logic…but absolutely logical fluid…and not just logic…but absolutely fluid logic!

    Reply

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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