I remember how you tried to enter another dimension
through the linen closet, how you pulled the blankets
and pillows off their shelves and left them strewn
all over the house. That was dark. I remember you
singing in the kitchen as you cooked, the way you
touched your tongue to your upper lip for a fraction
of a second as you articulated the “l” in I love you.
That was light. Because of you, I know that the shadow
of the ash tree moves like smoke against the far wall.
I know that, even in the blackest dream of swimming
with the dead, light glances off the water’s surface
and delights the eye. Now, you visit me, incorporeal
but somehow managing to wear night like a gown.
You hand me the sun as if to say, “This, too, is yours.”
***
Like most of my work, the poem deals with cognition, perception, imagination, and reality within the frameworks of trauma, family systems, culture, and language. This particular poem is for my mother and speaks to the ways of seeing that she gave me.
***
Dana Henry Martin’s work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Barrow Street, Chiron Review, Cider Press Review, FRiGG, Muzzle, New Letters, ONE ART, Rogue Agent, Sheila-Na-Gig, SWWIM, Trampoline, Willow Springs, and other literary journals. Martin’s poetry collections include the chapbooks No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press, forthcoming), Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books), In the Space Where I Was (Hyacinth Girl Press), and The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press).
