Poetry By Lana Hechtman Ayers

Sean Benham CC




Save the Stars for Later
    
              for Vincent

if the cell door does not open
if the barred window holds no moon
close your eyes 
listen to the cows lowing 
from a dream of childhood
taste the dewy scent of hay
on your dry tongue

there is a field beyond memory or hope
where crows paint
the dayscape like wild
blackberries and leaves 
chatter on cool mist mornings— 
promise 
to let the kiss of sky be enough






Naming My Daughter

               after Patricia Fargnoli’s poem of the same name
               & inspired by Victoria Chang’s 
              “With my back to the world 1997”

The year I turned thirty five, I named you milk trickle.
I named you girl who the moon watches like a stopped clock.
The one whose voice is a cracked bell.
The one slithering in the weeds behind my apartment.
I named you voice of the wind through stripped shutters.
The terror of this year was getting to know you.
I named you key that won’t open the lock.
I named you unlucky rabbit’s foot.
The one whose dice turn up snake eyes.
The one whose eyes are the color of Autumn winds.
The terror that year was fullness.
When I closed my eyes—a field full of dandelions
When I opened my eyes—an abandoned warehouse.
I named you wilted blossoms.
The one whose touch was sticky nectar.
I named you silent vowel.
The one who hides in plain sight.
The terror that year was emptiness.
I named you failing flashlight in a cave.
The one who rocks an imaginary horse in my attic mind.
The one who echoes screeches of twisting metal in utero.
You taught me that life can still occur without a body
so I named you forgiveness.






A Van Gogh Synesthesia

                “If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot
                             paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice
                                           will be silenced.”
                                                      —Vincent van Gogh

Each stroke of the mind   the pen   the brush   
asylum

asylum within asylum
prison and release 

each word its antithesis
cleaving to thought

cleaving of thoughts 
inertia into energy

each image a field of swirling vibrations
I want to believe there is no darkness

no perfect stillness
only imperfect language

in the indigo night
each star is its own daylight

We drink of water and of air
and we are water and air

bones   flesh   thoughts
temporary conundrums

What does it mean to paint
pain and impermanence

with paint and impermanence?
I seek God but see human faces— ​

other thoughts morph into intangibles
We can smell the wind and taste the dust

we become the wind   
become the dust

Song is a way to measure vibrations
voices   chimes   knocking   all signals fade

Repulsive energetic forces
fool us into sensing skin

touch is allusion and illusion
fields between particles like fences

Nothing of our senses
is real

Nothing we sense
is reality

If truth exists
can we ever know it?

Are we all merely
the lies God tells herself?

​



Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print as managing editor for three small presses. She lives in Oregon on unceded lands of the Yaqo’n people with her beloved husband and fur babies, where on clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon. 


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