There’s No Normal Anymore, Says the Minister of Farming
June high pressure sweeps out the dross. Tree pollen, grass pollen, weed pollen floating lush on the breeze, dusting the dashboards, settling on the lake like a skein of saffron. Celestial bodies above our bodies enact a story of anguish and will. On Friday, Mercury stations direct and passes the demon star, Algol. Our girl sits on the porch screaming: It happened to me, it happened when I was 12, I’m the one who has to live in this fucking town where nobody believes me. The peonies ignite. The poppies explode in a riot of crimson. I want to plant myself among the flaming blooms and lift their silk dresses, touch their black tongues. I want to channel the cycle of yearn and release. No one is sleeping long or deeply. The cats roam the gardens under a waxing moon. A bear cub wanders through the high school parking lot. Our girl sneaks out after midnight and doesn’t get caught. You’re chugging Benadryl and coffee, red-eyed out weeding the corn, trying to survive Gemini season. I’m riding high on June rocket fuel, waking to the woodpecker knocking at dawn. We know it can’t last, the dog days are coming, so why not go out in a blaze of solar fire, gobbling up the flowers like a supernova.
Hum
The clothes in my closet hang drab & forlorn skins
without a body I want to swap them
for somebody else’s life
I want one perfect sundress all summer long
In the soup of late August I outrun
the thunderstorms Goldenrod crackles
in the fields Poison ivy seethes
& shines in the ditches
What if I will always at some level
be sad? At my mother’s house
my ears prick for ghost noises footsteps
up the back stairs breath rattling
the latches
Stop trying to write something beautiful
and write something true My mother
with her fists curled
around two stuffed animals eyelids drooping
or perpetually closed I kiss the soft
hollows of her cheeks stroke the freckled
backs of her hands feel the bones
of her limbs
coming to the surface What will become
of this place we called home? Bats roost
in the attic squirrels scrabble
the walls yellowjackets nest
in joists & doorjambs Beneath
the silence you can hear a hum
something small wanting in
It’s not over yet
far from it
Diana Whitney is a queer writer and educator embracing a fierce belief in the power of poetry as a means of connection to self and others. She is the editor of the bestselling anthology You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves, winner of the Claudia Lewis Award, and the author of three full-length poetry books, Wanting It, Dark Beds, and Girl Trouble. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Kenyon Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and many other outlets. An advocate for survivors of sexual violence in her Vermont hometown and beyond, Diana works as a developmental editor and a community organizer for a rural LGBTQ+ nonprofit.