A Water Cycle, A Catholic Funeral, When the World ends we take Turns playing Dress Up, & heatwave
Grant Chemidlin
Poetry
A Water Cycle
I followed him—the man wandering the woods, collecting
the fallen rain. Each drop, a clear pearl he picked up,
then gently stashed in a blue satchel. From a distance, crouched
in the bushes, I studied his hands, his glittering fingers. I tried
to copy all his movements, but it never worked. I couldn’t
grasp them, couldn’t stop the drops from smashing
into tiny, ungrabbable lakes. My hands
weren’t ready, hadn’t learned yet the tender
language. I wanted to be like him, I wanted to like him, be
with him, but I didn’t know it. Now, I know it. Now,
I wander the woods in my bright purple raincoat, my own
pearl necklace, doing the work. The damp air bears
witness, the rustling leaves, the quiet eyes hiding
within them.
A Catholic Funeral
Fog
of frankincense. Wooden benches, wooden altar, wooden beams on high ceiling, wooden
coffin.
The room is a dead forest. The red carpet,
a tough tongue we
kneel on.
Even now, I avoid the spears
of light, hide
my stained-glass
insides.
She isn’t here. Here, amongst the pillars
of dust, the forced organ, sickly
chrysanthemums. Christ.
This isn’t where
I know her.
She is somewhere else. Ballroom
of a winter lodge, wearing her silver dress,
big gaudy clip-ons,
nestled in the arms of her love.
She’s swaying. She’s lost in the band’s low
crooning, when she sees the start
of snow.
When the World Ends, We Take Turns Playing Dress Up
In our front yard, I sit
beneath the willow,
thin leaves cast
a pool of shadow, lace-like, that
in the wind, shifts & shimmers.
Pink snow, no
little flowers. I almost cry
it’s so peaceful, cool & quiet,
but then I notice
the metal zipper, at the trunk’s
bottom, the branches swaying though
windless. A cough.
I jump. Pull the zipper up
to find my husband
holding rods. Before I can ask
what happened to our willow,
I remember I am in
the future. Trees, here,
are endangered. Everyone’s
an actor, desperate & nostalgic
for how it was.
Heatwave
There’s nothing to do, but
sit in stillness, root
for the lone window unit
huffing & puffing
cold smoke, though
useless. We do
what we must: peel off
our clothes,
first, out of pure
necessity, but then
as we free our old
animal bodies,
it becomes something
different:
salt lick,
slick,
beautiful sweat
like diamonds
shimmering. O
we are shimmering.
Our hands,
four
magnificent
frigatebirds,
take turns
skimming
our surfaces.
We
forgot this.
Grant Chemidlin is a queer poet and currently an MFA candidate at Antioch University-Los Angeles. He's the author of the chapbook New in Town (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and his full-length collection What We Lost in the Swamp will be published by Central Avenue Publishing in 2023. He's been a finalist for the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award and the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. Recent work has been featured or is forthcoming in Quarterly West, Iron Horse Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and River Heron Review, among others.