Caitlin Neely is an MFA candidate at the University of Virginia. Her work has been published in DIAGRAM, Sixth Finch, Thrush Poetry Journal, Devil's Lake and elsewhere. She is the founder of The MFA Years and the editor for Reservoir Journal. ---------
Come Spring, Come Flesh, Come Bright Earth
I.
Enna is full of geese. Horses pour through the meadows,
their mouths muzzles of light. She is not allowed
to touch them. Only watch as they fade to poppies.
She bathes in Pergusa, the bank heavy with monarchs.
Her hair grazes mud & silt, water purls around her feet.
II.
In her mouth
vegetation, crickets.
Wingéd throat.
Her body a holler,
field of fish
dense with night.
III.
Persephone full of longing and dark gulls
this is not the sea. Your face in the earth,
your mother waiting for you, calling for you.
In spring, you return to the hills,
the grain, her. How ethereal
you are, she says, how new
everything is, Hades so far away.
this is not the sea. Your face in the earth,
your mother waiting for you, calling for you.
In spring, you return to the hills,
the grain, her. How ethereal
you are, she says, how new
everything is, Hades so far away.
Origin: Eve
Take me by the hand.
The world swollen,
limb-groved, shored up;
now water
green with fish.
All mercy-hum, all
geography. Eyes and eyes
and river. My mouth
excavated, unloosed
of beauty. Here,
our bodies part
like wildness,
darken with trees.
Here, little low heaven,
the eroded blue
spring.
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Notes
“Come Spring, Come Flesh, Come Bright Earth ”: The line “Horses pour through the meadows” is based off of a line from the poem “Black Transit” by Lucia Perillo.
“Origin: Eve”: The line “little low heaven” is taken from the poem “Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and “the eroded blue” is based off of a line from the same poem.