by Jackie K. White

 

 

Let the labor of mourning bear its fruit already and cease

The cupped sighs, the salt in the throat

 

Let kaddish and threnody bed down with milk thistle

For its wounding yields purgation and gentility

 

Let it come forth with its vertigo and migraine remedy

Handling the black and green lozenges like the parts of a body

 

Let what the light teaches map dendrite and breath tracks

Let the foot not be punctured by sow thistle as it departs the grave

 

Let its thistle down yield sustenance to the goldfinches. Let it

Creep away, many-snaked, with a long hiss of distress

 

Let the method for calling up ghosts be an appendix to ordinary time

For no language is neutral, asking, “What will we become?”

 

And does not answer, “how to come forth from her stone

and the star thistle, oyster thistle, stones that we are”

 

Surely all who are locked in boxes should have their hands held

Surely they should fly out of them into the Lord’s mouth.

 

Surely she should not be locked in.