Poetry by Megan Merchant

Derek Σωκράτη CC





Consider that none of us are loving correctly.

I’m told that to cure loneliness, I must sit while it’s teething the
soft parts of me softer. 

I’m afraid of disintegrating into the bulb lights that almost reach.
They keep the darkest corners dark in my studio.
 
If there are too many abstractions, please, take this silk ribbon and
rusted spigot. This funnel and nail. I cemented camera lenses as
eyes to make a sculpture so I could fix a heart. Soft pulse red.
Padlocks that I wrench open.

I am fragile. Saying this out loud changes nothing. Most days, I do
not know how to handle me. 

I purchased each lens from a woman online who labeled the box as
hazardous materials, took it into my house, tore it open with my
teeth. 

Last time, I sat for him, on the edge of the bed, I let my hair loosen
and spill as he traced the line of my low back. Language undresses
meaning, attaches to it. 

The technique for joining materials without heat is called a cold fit.
This joining is not meant to last. 

But, know—there was heat— the way inside of this poem, there is
​another. 






Tell me more about the light where you are


how it enters glass block and swarms yellow. I know desert light
in my bones. Years of trying to scrape it. But you cannot gut what is
already hallowed. 


Here, the morning is tamped by rain. Blue everywhere. An
overture of sage and smoke. I am trying to be more direct, but
cannot pinch the you of you between my fingers. Yet. 


I lay the heaviest wool blanket over the bed. It smells forgotten. 


I need to name it. 


I am every version of myself that I have ever been—a carousel on
rapt speed that blurs every silhouette until the center is every
nowhere. I. I. I.


Tired of myself, I loop a broken pocket watch through the porch
rails. Wait for a day of sun to shimmy through, for the ravens to
scavenge it, make better use of memory. 


In my desert, there were marked hours when the heat rose from the
pavement, so I walked. Coyote scat. Horizon cinched by prickly
pear and creosote—almost greening, like mockery. 


Absence has its own endlessness. Refuses brittleness. I look for the
slightest scrap of meaning in every nothing. 


Forgive me, I forgot this was supposed to be about the light. 


The other evening, I uncovered projector slides of my mother.
Placed them on a light board. Noted the documented moments
where she never smiled. 


There is one, she is standing in a paddock, young, reins in her
hand. The horse not wanting to still. The scrapwood barn lit in the
background, as if she had already moved into the deepest shade.
Blue. 


It is possible to forgive yourself for not tending the ache that
another refused to name.


I am working, instead, on unknowing the version of me she
stamped with her own unhappiness. 


When I was little, I used to curl inside of every plank that slated
through the dining room curtains, wait for it to shift inside of a
broken hour. Chase it with my body. 


I track the miles you traverse, moving further away from a fixed
point—you. you. you. Despite the grit and ambiguity that is the
​only contour, the light you send keeps brightening. 

​


Megan Merchant (she/her) is author of six full-length poetry collections, a children’s book with Penguin Random House, and a handful of chapbooks. She is a board member for the Northern Arizona Book Festival, she is the owner of the editing, mentoring, and manuscript consultation business www.shiversong.com and holds an M.F.A. degree from UNLV. She is a visual artist and, most recently, won the New American Poetry Prize for her collection “Hortensia, in winter”. You can find her work at  https://meganmerchant.wixsite.com/poet



​
Anti-Heroin Chic is a sponsored project of Indolent Arts, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor. Please consider making a one-time tax-deductible donation.

Donate