To Participate in Queer History
Six feet below the white picket fence
we fuck like ginkgos. We fuck like germination.
Bodies split down the raphe
with life, sliding into fresh green air.
We’re screwing unseriously, mid-laughter,
roots churning up the concrete. We’re screwing
up the civilized parts of town because
our memories are tendrils looping back
ten thousand years before town meant fence
meant garden. We heard it through
the grapevine: before we were born
we built mountains out of premonitions.
If we keep digging we can hear the barritus
of everything we’ve thought or dreamt.
Benedictions
When I believed in a god I was better
at fear. Things like mornings frightened me
awake, long yellow light hanging sickly
and snow-thick over the suburbs, fog
lit briefly and mysteriously from behind.
They say sunrise should be
quiet but it goes off like a bomb: Walking,
crushing dew which crushes on grass,
thinking I’m alone until the orioles shriek again.
I have faith now in the light
that turns your eyes
warm and deep,
the brick slick with ice, the certainty
of finding fingers in your glove,
the shy dove making a snuggery
in the eaves each day before dawn.
Tashiana Seebeck (she/her) is originally from Southern California. She holds a BA in linguistics from New York University and an MFA in poetry from Colorado State University. Her work can be found in Digging Press, West 10th, and on poets.org as a 2024 Academy of American Poets University Poetry Prize recipient.
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