By Enikő Vághy
Helping My Lover Prune Thyme
He says it is necessary, and soon I am
on my knees beside him. Outside, only the trees
stand against the sky. Flocks of crows head
for their branches. I watch those hunched bodies
settle. They swathe, almost robe. Each bird I take
as another worry. What have I cut myself back from
by loving you? Every morning I wake deeper.
I wake preparing for new and different growth.
I am ready. It is a promise my fingers make, hooked
over the lip of the pot that holds this young bush, pushing
into the dirt as if into a body that needs to rise from its rest.
The dirt is wet, it is cold like my palms become when my lover
says I don’t want children and I laugh. Never, he tells me
cut too low, takes the tip of a thyme sprig, clips it clear
at the wrist. The eager green falls, my bravery. Words
I have gathered to my lips, knowing I have found
what will finally make me full. I have exhaled even
the dearest fights into nothing. My lover raises my hand
for a kiss, assures me there is a reason for this rotary
of wound and flourish. He prunes the thyme to give it form.
But whatever is broken back will grow once more. Stronger
and more insistent, like a question asked over and over
not because it expects a different answer, but because it wants
to see if it still desires.
Body Farm
—inspired by the photo series of the same title by Sally Mann
The bodies lie unbuttoned, like coats
left on the backs of chairs, in the booths
of restaurants. The corpse is a reaction
to a word spoken outside the frame.
The future is still happening, it just isn’t
being noticed. Death without a pair of eyes
to look at us. The subjects parted
like teeth. Blood dried on the last root
and tether. Who remains lisping
through the spaces?
First Memory: of Small
My hands spread in empty pantomime,
mother keeps me staring and lowers
her finger, begins tracing the gift. Carefully,
as if perfecting the first letter of a word.
I watch it circle in my palms, reach the size
of a river stone. Then the body spoken: a child,
this small. And it is like she has given me
the whole birth. My palms sag, I flinch. The fear,
tight and spinning as the day I picked up a bee
I thought was dead. It awoke in my warmth,
thrilled my skin with its dry buzz. There are words
that cause your hands to quiver. Say small
and watch mine bend into cupping.
Enikő Vághy is a poet whose work has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets College Prize in the graduate division. She is a PhD student in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. You can find her on Instagram @persepheni88.