These three poems by Lily Herman contend with the spiritual aftermath of loss, and the practices which sustain us…
by: Lily Herman
Dear Selection Committee
To punctuate my life
with a series of foolproof
win-win scenarios
I write about you leaving
and diligently submit
what I’ve written
Filling the hours
by begging magazines
to take what you have left
So that whatever
comes in response
I either have
my name newly in print
which is the kind of ecstasy
that can make me
momentarily forget
any source of suffering
Or else I hold
an embossed letter
to vindicate me
Saying We’re very sorry
But our readers will not like it
No one wants the story
to end like this.
Extant
I am nearly asleep
Which is to say
I am more awake
than you’ll ever be again
when I begin to speak
into the kingdom of half-rest,
its territories mammoth
and apparitional
Heaven with its outdoor kitchen,
its plentiful but cold water,
its children fathered,
then orphaned,
then as all things,
adopted by God
I say,
There is nothing worth saying
which sounds uncertain.
Fineness of human socket
creating human output:
Cuff, follicle, sadness, and joist
Connective tissue
Desire to be beautiful,
Desire more urgent
to be prized for beauty
I say,
I want to remember tenderness
as it was before I trapped myself
between your two hands
One hand infinite,
the other apology
Heaven, that cloud
with a stone floor
9 February 2018
When the sun is just coming up
or not, and I am restful or not
And the sky is pink and manageable
And the truths you didn’t tell are well
on their way away from this world
with you
And your other wife
is sprawled next to me now
instead of you, and instead of you
I am sprawled next to her
And we toss, trying to love
what is left of you
Still I like the hour alone when sun
has fully risen, and the streetlights
grow ashamed of their redundancy,
blink off exhausted
Another night trying
to keep Baltimore lit
I’m tired too from wondering
what gift you left me
What widows do is search
for the trinkents
men are supposed to scatter
carelessly but miraculously
in their jacket linings
to reassure the women they love
but have gone from for good
Lily Herman is a writer. A zine of her poems, Spree, is available through BRUISER. Her website is lilyjherman.com and she is writing about grief, like everyone else.
Header art by Sarang Naik.
