by Ren Marie Rodriguez

Eve, we reap wild out in the soybean field

You have to watch for the rattlesnakes out here, I told you

But you’ve been bit before and open some wounds

with ease and no suspension—

it’s of no concern to you

 

Eve, we run wild

Blades of slate ever out of reach

halting, gasping

I’m tongue-tied but your mouth keeps moving and

hurling sounds that I misunderstand

And do I take offense? Possibly

Sensitive peony with your infinite weightless petals,

fractured petals, what are you doing running?

What are you doing out of breath?

Isn’t your fabric too delicate

for that stitch in your side?

 

It was the flood of the century

I gathered up in a tartan throw and we stood still

and delayed—a headstrong suffering. Years

later I avoid my reflection, cos Eve,

there’s blood on my hands

That tragic business echoes

over those rattlesnakes and onyx soil

And no matter where we stir, it pursues—

steadfast, intense, unchanged

The load ripens in our marrow—pricks a spasm

with its vibration and they find us on the far side

of exhaustion

 

We fall wild into the fault line

of the promises and the shelter

the dead leaves and falling rain

the loneliness and the waiting

And I know I’m too young and too old to understand

what I heard—these stories aren’t mine

and that’s the problem, they’ve always been mine

I reach alone here, I go alone there

Slay at all the banquets without spilling a

drop, in a smile that shows

ten horse teeth, yet inside my veins sob and beg of skin

                Go! Run! Hide!

Wrap your arms around the bark of

the black walnut tree and hold tightly. This is

rock bottom—find the roots. They will give answers you

need as they remove a lung

Carnivorous roots. They tie you to the whipping

post on your way to work

 

You arise, seasons move, and

I don’t

know my name

I bend copper and stoic in the spin cycle

Eve, we seek wild but

home falls fast, night falls first, and we consume

and after the rain, will I know my name?

 

Endure,

you say

 

Drained of the performance, the frock. This lantern

isn’t lit like everyone else

but I see the dreams Eve, there is that wellspring,

the fountainhead, and I’ll spit it out and lean in

once and for all

But that’s for the lionhearted, isn’t it?

That’s for someone who sets the world on fire

and I don’t even know my name