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.’