The GreenhouseBy Lisa Gluskin StonestreetBull City Press |
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Chimera
Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in
an organism… cells containing the male Y chromosome were found circulating
in the blood of women after pregnancy.
I want them out. I want
to be myself, my self
again. My old untethered,
young untied. I lie: I want
nothing more—or want
no more the point.
Dendritic, en-
twined, signed on
for the duration. Bright
tangle, snaking line
of fire. The crucible
does not ask
for want. Is. Tied in,
shot through. Fired.
Called
and I go
down into it, the hall again
(streetlights, blinds)
all the same all the dark
down into it and do what must be done
with my body, with the patience
that I do not have
fellow sufferer, fellow sleeper, not-
sleeper, seeker
night boat, little sail
in the slow air in the rounded dark
inside the broken night
rudderless elliptical
in the stitched-together minute
minute
minute
365 x night x 8 (new)
x 4
x 2
x 8 again (despair, iron)
x 2
x 1, x occasional, x rarity (fever, monsters, light)
= now
= again
once
Charge
(When the giant sacrifices himself for the boy)
(and on the screen
the men marching toward him all the pieces
falling from his metal body
steaming in the snow)
When the giant sacrifices himself for the boy, the boy
at my side is lifted for a moment,
filled with air, the intake, the stop-
gasp held aloft, no sound:
the shock at the top of the arc, the drop—
and only then, on the way down, opens into sob: hard water
wrung from a knot. All the pieces
falling.
Small hot forehead pressed to my chest. Animal exposed in the storm.
Knows himself then, knows himself to want more.