Poetry By Michelle Holland

Sean Benham CC




Red on the Wing 
Inspired by Sonia Gechtoff’s oil-paining, “Self-Portrait,” (1954)

                                                                       Blackbirds red-winged
                                                                      Glint crimson on the fly
                                                                            Flash of fire horse

I closed my eyes and drew a horse, because 
it’s the lunar new year, and I needed to hang 
on to something.  The red I painted later, 

smudges along wavering haunch lines, 
and over flared nostrils. Closed my eyes 
again to draw red-winged blackbirds in flight 

because I grew up with their song down 
by the creek that wound through cow pastures 
where the lone horse grazed. I hear them now, 

gathering, talking to me when I look up 
from my round piñon-wood table, see 
the long retablo of red-winged blackbirds, 

gold paint a gilding light for the red, 
echo of fire that lines my blind-drawn horse. 
I add crimson to the lines I drew for wings, 

while the fire horse shatters to ashes what’s left 
of my heart, remakes into an image of this new year  
under a new moon growing from darkness, 

a self-portrait knowing my mother will die 
before the moon is full again. There is no 
reconciliation, no reaching her just in time 

to hear her exhale quietly, a last push
into the world. What doesn’t have to be said
when I sketch the roiling of heart and mind? 

I won’t call it storm or fire, all that rises 
from a crashing end, the flight and gallop 
in the dark toward a beginning drawn blind.

​




To My Daughters after the Death of my Mother
Inspired by Claire Falkenstein’s brazed copper and fused glass sculpture, “Fusion,” (1975)

When my legs have crumpled and my organs 
have become translucent handfuls of pulsing: 
hidden heart, green lungs, and guts, full of light, 
don’t put me in a wheelchair. 

I’m writing in secret now, though I hope
for your reading, leap to the meaning here, 
how I wish to find myself held. The Living Will 
in place, but the Advanced Healthcare Directive 
does not include allowing love to leave. 

When I’ve given over even my legs 
to become just an armful of scrunchy body, 
head so heavy, I’ll always need support, 
don’t slump me into something easy. 

Cradle me in a nest of fused copper, papoose-like, 
don’t worry, I will be unaware of pain, having lost 
every nerve ending to the wind surprising me 
along a ridge, to each instance when I tumbled 
to the ground, checked my fall with hands 
and elbows, knees scraped, thorns along my thighs.

How, you may wonder, is my heart still beating, 
how are these reflections rendered on paper, pen gliding, 
held by a hand once mine, I suppose, because 
there must be some way to put me,  
propped up, fusing my working parts, like glass. 

Nestle me into an exoskeleton of copper-hard ribbons.
This from a body looking for what comes next, 
when there is no body, or no way away from delineation. 
It’s all in there, what’s left, tucked globules, resident of structure:
something semi-precious in the curve of a conductor, 
coppery patina, verdigris, uncomfortable liberty.

Always your mother, it’s you my  daughters
I imagine folding what’s left after I’ve sloughed off 
all the outer layers. Gather me in your arms, gently 
fusing me into a future uterus, hold my heart and when 
I say heart, I mean love, all unconditional.

​


​Michelle Holland lives in Chimayó, NM. Her poems can be found in literary journals, in print, online, and anthologized, most recently in the New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, UNM Press, and The Common Language Project: Ascent. She has two books of poetry: Chaos Theory, Sin Fronteras Press, and The Sound a Raven Makes, Tres Chicas Press, New Mexico Book Award winner. Fall 2026: Circe at the Laundromat, Casa Urraca Press.


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