Alyse Knorr
I began in a cave chiseling buffalo on walls:
flint bangs sparks from stone and look!—the beginning of all
—his voice startled by new love—
No, I began with a great ocean, voice through darkness
dividing heaven from sky, no, sky from water
—his hands on my body separating me from sky—
no, start with the first cells dividing, evolution of bones and lungs,
land masses drifting to fill the gaps—but where to begin?
I am made simply, have walked this earth for 27 years only
and will have been gone for billions when you hear these
most private thoughts. Start with two in a garden,
in a cave, in a garden in a cave, touching
and touching until we make fire appear.
Jane and Then-Jane dance in their bodies
Jane:
murmur-maker
of a future optimistic
Then-Jane:
island inaccessible
when we became
women
dead comet husks
my copper mother
& shed ourselves
for the new season
I would build for us
a new society
leave me alone
to do my exploring
nothing to eat but fruit
bursting with cosmos
aluminum cocoon
glistens golden
all worlds all times
inside us the stars
turn to dust the truth is
spirit music
cosmic discourse
I am living I am alive
happy despite all this happiness
Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books, 2013), and the chapbook Alternates (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, ZYZZYVA, Caketrain, and the Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012), among others. She has completed artist residencies at the Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and New York Mills Arts Retreat. Alyse is a cofounding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.