Bird Woman
I remember what it was like to fly, dragged into the sky and left
to circle my way back to earth alone,
as if the day could be unlocked, like clouds separating
to reveal houses and mountains, push the weather
back against the land’s hard forehead. Or just fit myself
between two rusty chains onto a smile of rubber, my sneakers
pumped against clouds that rise out of a whispering sea.
If I could just drop these clothes in salt where seaweed gleams
and driftwood crouches, coughed from the waves, osseous,
and etched in the sand: Daniela loves Emily
and Amelia Seagull. How I envy those gulls who fly
off alone, left to dip and glide in thermals, their cries
plaintive, their singular wings spread to accept this world whole,
sucked from above and pressed from below, coaxed by wind
like a nipple rubbed along an infant’s chin, inviting, inviting.
If only someone had said, I love the way your breasts have suffered
and sagged because they fed our many children,
and I have kissed them so many thousands of times
until they wilted from good use. If I only had wings
to lift myself up, then I might open into a pocket of air,
into the unbroken rhythm of time and space, my face
reflected in clouds or just my name etched in sand,
rust colored smudges on my palms, then
I could remember I was once here, near
the strange, empty bones spit from the bottom of the sea.
The Resonance
to Saddiq
Gathered heat in my left hand, happiness
in my right. Clap the time of it. Bodies
flagged and vibrating in the wind.
If only I could see time
as timeless, like God
or the birds—here
I only ever meet my sons
at funerals,
where we all stand silent
and marked, the children
I once knew,
now men in uniform,
the men, now bearded
and gray—
The known is so small, almost
inexpressible, bubbles
inside a glass, a bit
of cheese on a cracker, you
calling me from inside the rain,
your voice chocolated
between raindrops, car wipers
a backbeat of your hands clapping—
the hands that hold
my feet chaliced to the page,
lead the shape of the dance,
and the raindrops that water
us into a borderless
dream, my forehead resting
against yours, connected
as blood, opening your hand
in mine where I can smell
the flower of you, there,
in your palm, your fingers antenna’d,
tuning forked, set
against my ear, your lips
on my forehead. I feel it still,
this hard process of hum,
of coming into the body,
to see the yes
of it, the resonance of it.
RACHEL HEIMOWITZ is the author of the chapbook, What the Light Reveals (Tebot Bach Press, 2014.) Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Spillway, Prairie Schooner, and Georgia Review. She was recently a finalist for the COR Richard Peterson Prize, winner of the Passenger Prize and she has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. Rachel received her MFA from Pacific University in Spring 2015. http://www.rachelheimowitz.com.
Twyckenham Notes 