WHO BEGAT THE EARTH?
Who begat the earth? I did.
I grew it three times in my belly.
That isn’t true. It is.
It’s a metaphor. I made three lives.
Who begat the earth? Not me.
None of this is my fault.
Who begat the hours that squeeze out like a paste?
God. What does he look like? Nobody knows.
He lives in a city. Nobody knows how to get there anymore.
Who begat the bean vine growing like a slow thought around the trellis?
The earth. We inherited it, a palace a mansion a city a forest a ship of treasures we’re sinking inside.
EMILY BLUDWORTH DE BARRIOS is the author of Splendor, a book of poems. She’s also published two chapbooks: Women, Money, Children, Ghosts, from Sixth Finch, and Extraordinary Power, from Factory Hollow Press. Her poems have appeared in publications such as jubilat, The Harvard Review, and The Poetry Review. Born in Houston and raised in Egypt, the United States, and Venezuela, she currently lives with her husband and three children in Houston. Her website is www.emilybludworthdebarrios.com.
Read more by Emily Bludworth de Barrios:
Read all Emily Bludworth de Barrios’ poems in B O D Y
Poem in Sixth Finch
Poem in Tender
Poem in the Harvard Review
He sang /
like a gas station on a black summer night.
you stand a long time /
by the creek, then /
feed it two pennies, /
one for you, one /
for the love /
inside you that /
you can do nothing /
with or about.
A talisman against the agony /
in his knees and hips //
for which he was taking /
black-market fentanyl
I greet your gliding flight O wings of death / But there are other signs too
realizing that the horizon is a line constituting an intersection between at least two systems, the inner and the outer one. Between an observer on the move and the roads within the landscape ...
the story / the two white women will not retract, despite the fact /
that inside each story we tell another writes itself
the intoxicating ministry of dusk, the anchor of daylight lifting, sheets white / like a freshly crushed pill, // the vortex of the body and the clap of the / coral tongue...
Before we go any further, I want to publicly acknowledge //
that I love every person in this room. I mean it. /
We’ve traveled from all over to be here, and I love /
each of you, all of you, every last one of you, except /
Harold
I tithe 10% of my new underwear to my future /
self, the one who has fallen in love.
Along one river fell /
all the luck in the world.
