When I was a girl, there were mountains…
by Blake Hackler
Published May 27th, 2020
PDF Micro-Chapbook
14 Pages
After All the Fucking, A Quiet River: Fifteen Views of Celibacy
You’d think it would be white wouldn’t you, but it’s more the silver of Nana’s old serving spoons.
A pair of kid gloves I’ve slipped myself into, tight, like a second skin fastened with pearls.
The quiet river I mentioned, banked on both sides
by cliffs the color of having bled for what you thought was love.
The boat too, listing to one side, once blue hull wave- washed to argent.
Still watertight. Raiment. And ransom.
A cloud of moths caught inside a pane
of glass. Flattened, somehow, with dimension.
I had hoped it would be the pink robin, Nature’s own Harry Styles. But no, it’s only a house sparrow.
It is the opposite of Harry Styles. The very opposite.
Dionne Warwick’s riffs in Then Came You – a noble attempt in spite of the instrument’s natural inclinations.
The faint scent of Pledge in the air, Sunday evenings after a day of cleaning.
A Thank You card marked return to sender.
You’d think it would be December, but it’s actually May. On the East Coast, though. In Maine. But still, May.
His fingertips tracing my ears, as he whispered Blake.
The silver-gray house sparrow, caught midair, its flight the shape of a city on the Hudson. Its flight a quiet river that dives, then dips, then rises, silver in the sun.
Self-Portrait as Hero
They told me to forget you, let
the memory of you ebb like last
light lost to horizon on the Hellespont.
They want to erase me back to the white meadow I was, blanched anemone, senseless.
but now oh now my flesh
has gone edgeless after you, runs
down these tower walls
fed by the memory of your skin
flecked in half-moon shadow, stretched across my body like a fleece.
our tongues a lexicon of want and patience.
They call it theft. Yes. But those nights I lit
my lamp to guide your way across the water I was architect
of my own undoing, wed
only to the scalpel of your gaze.
Now, the waves crest. I step to the edge. Dive.
Thirty Observations on Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel
1. Not poles, but spears, sharp-tipped, empty
2. Notice their bloodless gaze, rib skinny bodies concaved by ache and hunger.
3. I meant the hunters, not the hounds. But the hounds too.
4. Listen. Not one of them barks.
5. Hubert, their patron saint, hangs from the inn, hinge split, vision spent.
6. There was never a miracle that stopped a single winter.
7. The crows, black as anchors, sniff slaughter in the air and gather, keep watch
8. Mother, father, uncle, and little Lotte throw faggots on the fire. Furniture, too.
9. They watch the faggots burn. They cry for the furniture.
10. Faggots and furniture were the same then. Both expendable.
11. I would have burned had I been there.
12. Yara, the one the women call witch, watches from the dark, her mouth stitched silent from all the years of othering
13. She knows why the hunters have come, says nothing.
14. Lift her skirt and you’ll see she’s cut runes into the wrinkled skin below her naval.
15. A door, amputated, lies in the snow.
16. Farther on, a barn goes up in flames. No one left to blame soon.
17. The church stands empty. God escaped and took the faces with him
18. Notice no one has a face. Not really.
19. In the lower right corner, two sisters sled.
20. Miriam, the younger, is the only one in town bold enough to wear red. It matches her hair.
21. The hunters will save her for last.
22. The pond’s hardened to a greyish green, a bruise halfway to healing.
23. The villagers skate, sled, curb, fish, fill the air with laughter and self-interest. Listen. It sounds like silence.
24. Notice the three bodies lying on the ice. Have they died?
25. Brugel’s smudged the horizon, the treetops thumbprints of ash.
26. Later the wolves will come down from the mountains and divide what’s left
27. Another crow, the size of a mountain peak.
28. Ask me to explain how absence tastes.
29. The hunters have come home. The hunters have come.
30. Run.