poems by christie ann reynolds

A station of the second soul

This last time you left was the last time.

We spoke briefly of frost.

Of a forest of yew trees that died.

(That was November.)

And  _____ is harder now.

All the coals of me rolling out,    each season

       a shroud

I loop from ear to toe.

A draping I remove when I think of you.

No one watches as I undress

A wound gives off its own light

Battles down between epidermal layers and hairs:

Shining stiff lake of    pool of     red of—

Lies flat amongst freckles, rises

As a tiny ridge, skinned plateau.

It is curious, O scab! O sore! Delights

In making elbows move rigidly,

In designs it grooves on a wincing face.

O it delights too, in knowing it is vulnerable

to sharp things, catching in zippers. Wound interrupts.

Revels in its violence—abandons piece after piece

Of personhood in crustlings upon cement.  O terrible

Little scrape! O wanderlust of recklessness! O featureless plane!

What does not envy your erasure of the body?

In the name of the Daughter

When I tire of making you up I mouth the word (God) and it spears through my teeth like tiny pins, bypassing enamel, coffee stains. It looks like a pause or the crevice of an overlap—the swarthy word—like a tiny bunting of air that lifts a kite.     In a dream I had I said your name quietly.  The fog turned red.   No one could see who was angry. I wore a blue mouth, dragged a clubfooted body into a square where Siddhartha stood chanting. I awoke wondering if I had somehow touched you in my sleep.   But even in my dreams I tire of inventing you   finding you   shading you  in with a small graphite pencil between real time thoughts, between albino rhinoceroses albino people, all the endangered   undiscovered stink bugs and cancer plants. I was a girl the first time I mouthed it. I became who I am and wrote for you   sought for you between these black letters. I have opened books with your nameless name, overturned leaflets of you where crossword puzzles demanded I know your Son, what he was known for.  When the bald white tumuli of a love I loved once rolled back and never came back I cried Oh my father, oh you and your sons, where is the Mother, the Daughter, the birthing ones who know what they live for—

Christie Ann Reynolds is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetry at The New School. She is a native New Yorker and a 2003 recipient of an undergraduate award from the Academy of American Poetry. Christie Ann lives in Queens with her two finches Pablo and Henri.

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