and permutations

This poem was written by Diane Exavier in a 12-Month Poetry Collection Generator taught by Angel Nafis

Somewhere is the past: too plural for any
one of us to manage. Management is love.

Love in this family is women standing
ashore with men, stones in palms.

We hold our rocks with prayers.
They cover theirs with desire.

We hurl our supplications at the bay.
They aim their pleas too close to our temples.

Our eyes wide as their smiles.
Their dreams will kill us.

By men we mean nation
or space between oceans

or cliff of an abyss
or a black hole’s outermost skin

or a shell of the point of no return.
Return in this family is reclamation of time.

                      dreaming of
                    legal pads brimming
                         with cursive
              word processed feelings
                bound by spine
              to the highest power of
                         dressers stacked with pill
                  bottles and cologne, reeking

All moments become gummy grains of rice.
Children cave into a breathless chest.

*

Diane Exavier’s book-length lyric is an attempt to do the math of a woman, of a family, of a country, of a diaspora. The sum of one life reveals the permutations of many: daughters, sisters, lovers. The cost of one death is uncountable. This book is ledger and legacy. The Math of Saint Felix is available to order at the3rdthing.press.