Arrangement of Desire by Nicole Rollender
The names of my beloveds who aren’t returning. A night of blue frost, high stars.
When we went to that tiny Cape Cod, remember the lights going out? Tinged bird
feathers rustling on the sill. No matter how I make my lists, I can’t separate my soul
from you. It’s easier to imagine me absent, like the cumbersome branch you removed
from the pear tree—no more ducking. Yet, the old reflex stays, to hump your back on
the way to the shed. Even if I escape the limits of my body, even if my hand isn’t there
to find yours in bed, we feel a phantom limb. A ghost branch heavy with white flowers
and spring moths. Clot of blood swirling in the toilet after the test showed two lines. We
have to accept we can lose everything. Long bands of light. The first time, us stretching
field into mountain, the beginning of slow, our bodies drift on thick horses at twilight,
green as trapped souls in peat bogs. Your grandfather dug up the bullet-in-calf bone,
in cornfields past the quiet barn—filled with dust-covered clocks, chair frames, what bird
skulls make of wings. Here, in Gettysburg, the barn found a soldier, his buttons and spoons
intact. We have to be ready to give everything up. Horse chestnuts fallen on this battlefield.
Rusty leaves dampening, deeper by breastworks. Lord, let them assemble among us. You
know how I’ve knelt by these stones, forehead on the same gray rock, as if I could be then
and now. I realize I’ll go on living, in spite of these sorrows. If God’s the sea and souls eternal
stars reflecting. Single bones between rocks, between speaking their names for the last &
always after. Die untethered into. Golden bleeds. Since I can see the faces of the dead, I’ve
wondered if I was born a garlanded agent of the supernatural. Someone lingers between
goldenrod & fence, his hand out to a lamb, its mouth opening to what strange, delicious
forb he offers.
A 2017 NJ Council on the Arts poetry fellow, Nicole Rollender is the author of the poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love (Five Oaks Press), and four poetry chapbooks. She has won poetry prizes from Palette Poetry, Gigantic Sequins, CALYX Journal and Ruminate Magazine. Her work appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, Ninth Letter, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill Journal and West Branch, among many other journals. Nicole holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania State University. She’s also co-founder and CEO of Strand Writing Services. Visit her online: www.nicolemrollender.com.