Love in the Margins
Come on, shapeshifter—
I can’t dance either.
But I want to hold
your shadowy body,
hum crooked tunes
in your abalone ear.
Out here on the edge,
desperadas don’t always
make good lovers.
Sometimes our scars
match too well; touch
is barbed wire and border.
I’ll try not to hide behind
my bruises if you’ll
give me the hard gray line
of your shoulder.
Can’t you hear
the cricket’s ebbing
daysong? Let me
tuck that tidal melody
into the wine-colored
strands of your hair,
braid your name
with horizon’s indigo
kiss. Glorious outlaws,
we’ve got nothing to lose
but this edge.
■
Come on, shapeshifter—
I can’t dance either.
But I want to hold
your shadowy body,
hum crooked tunes
in your abalone ear.
Out here on the edge,
desperadas don’t always
make good lovers.
Sometimes our scars
match too well; touch
is barbed wire and border.
I’ll try not to hide behind
my bruises if you’ll
give me the hard gray line
of your shoulder.
Can’t you hear
the cricket’s ebbing
daysong? Let me
tuck that tidal melody
into the wine-colored
strands of your hair,
braid your name
with horizon’s indigo
kiss. Glorious outlaws,
we’ve got nothing to lose
but this edge.
■
Hello Friends,
Just yesterday, I learned (maybe re-learned?) a really cool word from my friend and former roommate Ori (Thanks, Ori!): palimpsest. In less traditional usage, I like to think palimpsest could apply not just to old parchment being erased and reused but to any situation where layers upon layers are interacting with each other — such as (one of my particular interests) places where graffiti and murals and graffiti layer on top of each other, weather away, and layer again, over time. One of the thoughts I had learning/re-learning this word was that it sounds like something there would be poems about; it’s got a poetic quality to it.
So today — as sometimes happens when you are running a poem-a-day list and need to finalize your pick for today’s poem — I accidentally went down this totally separate crazy rabbit hole, jumping from poet to poet, poem to poem, with no thought of yesterday’s palimpsest (I was chasing after something else). And what do I find? A poem called “Palimpsest.”
Obviously this was a sign to stop going down the rabbit hole; I had arrived. But, surprise twist, today’s poem is not actually “Palimpsest.” It’s the poem that was right next to it, “Love in the Margins,” by Deborah A. Miranda. Why? Because it’s the one I was looking for, and I promised you April 2019 would include some tercets! Praise Lit Hub for featuring a New Poetry by Queer Indigenous Women series curated by Natalie Diaz (where you can also go read the “Palimpsest” poem if you’re curious!)
Remember with couplets we talked about how line breaks and stanza breaks can affect how you read a poem? Did you feel how the “horizon’s indigo” hangs in that space between the last two stanzas, like the last light lingers above the horizon at sunset, and then transforms into a “kiss”? Pretty cool, right? That’s poetry!
— Ellen