Georgia, forgive me. For years I’ve carried this grief
like a hoop of bone, framing everything I see: fragments
of water, fragments of earth. No visible wound, no body
to bury, no song for safe passage to whatever the next
world brings. I must be the only person here not asking,
Where are the flowers? Fuck the flowers, those flamboyant
twists of pistil and petal, wet pearls shy between folds.
Georgia, peel away the skin, lay it bare. Give me
your jagged cliffs, cloud shadows rolling over Ghost Ranch.
Give me your black cross dissecting the stars
into cold quadrants, horseshoe and turkey feather, adobe
and antler, dry leaf, abandoned shell. I like empty spaces,
you said. Holes can be very expressive. And Georgia, this rift
in my heart, this if, this why, this pelvic brim I fill with desert
sky and roses, I don’t think I need to tell you how it screams.
This poem first appeared in Ploughshares. Thanks to guest editor Rigoberto González for selecting it.
Sarah Burke 