SOUNDING IS NAMING THE GAP BETWEEN US AND THEN TRAVELING THROUGH IT by Makshya Tolbert


My long body. This length a love poem.

Distance between us a seething river, bound

and easily scratched, always leading some

where else. Knowing only tenderness, flapping

adrift. My length an instrument of lead and rope

prone to double refraction. Long body, awash in split

light. What will we measure today if not our own

length. How long this morning in us can stay

quiet. True and moving, always a river. Nearby a plumage

of purple and blue shimmering at the mercy

of what it can reach. The heron an epic.

Sounding is naming the gap between us

and then traveling through it, is the opaque

fissure at the surface. My long body

a stretching river, long at the mouth.

 

Makshya Tolbert (she & they) is a poet living in the spaces between blk memory and ecological possibility. She has recently published poetry in Narrative Magazine, Ran Off With The Star Bassoon, Alluvia Magazine, and The Night Heron Barks. She has poetry and essays forthcoming in Emergence Magazine and Art Papers. Makshya is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing Program. In her free time, she is elsewhere—where Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. calls ‘that physical or metaphorical place that affords the space to breathe.’