Sonnet in which no one leaves
forsythia magnolia all the eager flowers
busting into blossom before their leaves
girlhood was a wasting disease
young does bashing out their brains onto the leaves
bleeding through jeans
on an inflatable mattress as even the air leaves
heirloom tomato on toast savory ovary
carved heart book of sheer red leaves
motorcyclist’s skull opened on the road home
cops yelling until everyone leaves
vernal pools mad with trillium trout lily geranium
frog song choir in the cathedral of leaves
I hold my hand in the shape of a bud
to unfurl inside her like the new green leaves
Natural History
On this forever redeye there is an extra charge
for water, but I have learned to ask the flight attendants
for a cup of ice, which is complimentary, sucking the chips
as though fasting before surgery, a continent scrolling
gorgeously beneath me, how unfortunate to be bored shitless
of glory, having now seen
the Hall of North American Mammals
in several major cities, dioramas of taxidermy bliss
where I witnessed the continent’s romances repeating:
extended families of bison ranked by shagginess,
mountain lion cub frozen mid-pounce for mama’s tail,
coyote pups wrestling by a den marked with no scent
but dust, and the two bald eagles nesting in perpetuity,
cobwebs on outstretched wings, sometimes a rabbit
in one’s beak, the limp thing made twice-dead
like an ex-love mentioned in a poem, a former
partner, for instance, tearful, trying to explain
she wasn’t not gay
just for sleeping with a man, ironic quarrel
considering my own profession of bisexual apologetics,
deliberate nebulousness of the lyric you, the speaker
of the poem’s implied repertoire of handjob techniques,
vague habit of introducing my partner in the cowboy way,
pardner, my pardoner at the afterparty in a cassock,
hickey livid above his collar, while another partner sexts me
snapshots of butterflies drinking her sweat, arm hairs
delicate as tripwires, and still it is so hard to describe
my partners in the plural
without sounding like a law firm or local accountants’ agency,
all handshakes and contractual obligations, which is indeed
how some people go about their polyamory, but I just love
as stupidly as I can, I hope, and take dates to the big museums
to see the assorted families of beasts, the carrier snails
gathering other shells into their spirals, hoards small
at the centre but bolder with time, like hearts I once declared
in an anatomically incorrect but spiritually earnest way,
like when I optimistically described as
an abundance mindset
the period in which I had two boyfriends and two girlfriends
across two continents, not paired up for the ark
but unto each their ecological niches, alcoves
built into my chest, unique habitats, directional lamps
to keep them in their best lights, at night I touched
their switches one by one, and afterwards with glassy eyes
they stared across the darkened hall into each other’s lives,
but no matter their plumage, their patterns of hair,
each was the first and the last of their kind,
and all equally rare –
there – this collector’s instinct, the need to keep
what I admired behind glass, which couldn’t last,
whether in one fussy diorama or a bacchanalian dozen,
not for my forefathers who loved on their new birds so much
they snuffed them all with blunderbusses, stuffed
those beautiful bodies for museum displays, learned
too late that to prize the real life is to watch it slip away
beyond your vision, the creatures keeping their mysteries,
choosing when to let themselves be seen,
ie: when she told me
about the man it wasn’t the specific gravity of him
that mattered, it was that I hadn’t understood sooner
she wanted to be only his, despite previous consensus
re: liberal libidinal anarchy, and only then did I know I couldn’t
know, or own, all there was of longing, couldn’t proclaim
my dalliances were antidotes, necessary air holes poked
in the humane trap of honeymooning, what did I risk,
prowling my gallery of warm bodies, in picking
an exhibit in which to rest, and
someone to wear on my hands
every day, if ever I retired from carnal manifoldness, stopped
containing multitudes so literally, cooled it on fucking
fucking everybody, what was I afraid of, getting rooted
securely, like the sprays of withered switchgrass
glued around my display, where behind my petrified form
the hand-painted vistas would fade with decades, nostalgic
snow eternal on the peaks, horizon-storms forever not-arriving
to air devoid of petrichor, humidity-controlled, although
from time to time I might look out at the other specimens,
meticulous illusions of wildness, the exhibition hall
narrower than I remembered, some spotlights flickering
or blown completely, patches of fur shedding from
my youth’s apex
Charismatic Megafauna –
but this assumes the museum could hold us, the lovers
already clambering from our enclosures, tiptoes
on scuffed wood to doors opening on dewy darkness, the forest
of desire deeper than any petty diorama, more perilous, perhaps
worth getting lost in, if only for our greed to be together
in the thicket, beating our wings against the obvious
brightness, making mosaics of our fallen scales, and even knowing I
am no pinned butterfly, something silvery as a needle keens
through me still, the piercing urge to turn inevitably
back to you, asleep in your seat
by the window, last of the free ice chips melting in my mouth
like a glacier’s ghost, the other passengers clapping
as we are brought down from the sky, small planet spinning
against the sun like a magnificent rotisserie chicken, my bitten nails
inflamed with salt, reaching for another tender thigh
Rebecca Hawkes is a queer painter-poet from rural Aotearoa (New Zealand). She is the author of the collection Meat Lovers (AUP), and chapbooks Softcore Coldsores (AUP New Poets) and Hardcore Pastorals (Cordite). She edits NZ poetry journal Sweet Mammalian and co-edited the Pacific climate-poetics anthology, No Other Place to Stand. She holds an MFA in yearning (and, lesserly, poetry) from the University of Michigan, from which new work has found homes in places like The Threepenny Review, The Georgia Review, Palette, Noir Sauna, Phoebe, and HAD. Find her on Instagram or at rebeccahawkesart.com.
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