Two Poems
by Shannon Hardwick
BOOK OF GAIGEMON III
Above, a strangled herd of stars. You hunger
For notes. You can't distinguish between
Grace and emptiness —bite the lips of both,
Tear ribs from fish, burn the lost headed
Man. What are you carrying? a boy,
Hunted, speaks from the stall, spine aglow
With snakes, with petrol, Let me carry your dead, he says —
Now it's over, no one knows how to be born, where babies go.
MY EAR BLED AND HE CREATED THE WORLD
Please protect me from myself. The howl is cornered as a wounded owl
outside my door, bargaining to be let in. The head of the owl
dreams of sky on fire for his wings. You see,
I hoped in a calling. In a name
to be called. Mine.
But of hours, men build carved trees into prisons and I walk splintered into myself
each day, a stranger, to say my name to strangers. They lip themselves
into me. Once, I had a man break his neck over a stone-hedge to let
fields grow out, in circles around his temples. I walked
the new land a child, looking for myself in the burrs.
I found a woman caught in the wire, singing.
What are you singing. She said,
Holy is the Mountain.
Please protect me. I think
of the broken neck of the man,
fields sprouting from his eyes. He called me
over to him and beat me until my ear bled. And from there,
he said he knew his love was real. And from there he went
howling and cleaning my skin with lips, staking claim for what was his.
The woman in the barbs tries continually to get out. She visits me in dreams and sings
Holy is the Mountain until the owl descends. Protect me.
The woman in the barbs swings her wrists until they bleed.
This is how I know she loves me.
The man with fields sprouting from his eyes and neck on the stone-hedge wakes me
at night. He begs me, since all he feels is pain,
to fuck him. The sky leans in, then out, keeping his cock hard. I hate to tell you this,
he says, but I will never stop.
From the field I search for a child, walking eternity. She won't stop singing
Holy is the Mountain.
I want to sleep until I'm dead, she says.
I build carved trees into prisons and shadows with backs of horses.
I skinned one just last week, I said, in a dream.
Thank you, says the girl, then sleeps.
The man overtaken by fields was once a boy.
I know this because one day in his kitchen he showed me a painting.
I thought of you, he said, before you were born. Just then,
the owl flew by the window, warned me to keep my panties on.
From here, it all gets confusing, I say to the woman in the chair.
She isn't the woman in the barbs, but she listens.
No one else but the owl follows me all my days.
And holy is the mountain, says the woman in the chair, Is that your name?
Myself I wanted to be called but haven't.
My ear bled and he created a world. I asked for it. I asked for a calling.
I don't understand why the tender-bird left, I said.
The woman in the chair leans back.
You're safe, she said.
I cried.
Where do you feel it, she said.
My throat.
As though his hands never left and I'm twenty again and tired of life.
Who was the tender-bird?
The First Man, I said.
You loved. She said.
Yes, commonly known as the First Man.
But I'm Eve and the man with the field coming out of his eyes asks me to put him down
every night. Protect me. The girl doesn't know this.
What girl?
She, the perpetual child in prisons made from carved trees and shadows,
the backs of horses.
Perhaps you equate sex with violence.
The tender-bird. He is the owl, wounded, howling.
I don't understand.
Neither do I.
But I am a woman, scared.
Holy is the Mountain.
Protect me from myself.
The eyes the fields my stones my hands
the unwavering search for the child.
I want to sleep until I die.
Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick graduated with her Masters in Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College in 2010. She recently completed her first full-length manuscript of essays and poetry and has a chapbook in print. She writes in New York and Texas.