Lisa Allen Ortiz
If I can live without myself, what else can I live without?
Trees, no. Breath. But. Lungs. Not.
My friend's dad growing up had one lung.
I thought about that.
My cousin had no kidneys.
We're all missing parts,
but my question is
when does the missing become
all that we are.

That crow shrieks from the wire.
Me with talons. Imag1ne. Something
called soul cut out of night and
pasted on day. Foul bird.
Ghosts. The grass under the feet
I still have. Dirt under the grass.
Thing is, I feel connected to you.

No tendon or cervical spine but
I've (whatever) spent time
with your body.
I've felt your body inside mine.
Inside, your body inside mine,
appendages and crevices.
Body inside a body. Wheel inside the old wheel.
Sex is weird says the crow from his wire.
How crows make love I type in.
Photo of crows,
stacked.

Will I talk to you
when you're dead?
Will I visit your grave
or some beach
where your charred bones lay at rest?
Will you be eaten by crows. (Vile
but everything that falls on
the earth becomes earth.
You told me that.)
You. You know who you are
and you also know who you are. Me.
Will I talk to sand? Will you talk to me
when I'm sand? Sometimes
go to the gym.

People at the gym push their bodies
hard on machines. Same way I push against
you (special you) in the night.
I hold on with all my might.
I want. Is wanting
all that we hold with our life?
Is appetite all that we are?
Will I be fed in the end. Will I feed?
My friend's dad had one lung but his mother
had two. Together they lived a long time
sharing three. They sat in their house.

Same with you and me. We sit
and wait for our wife, her two lungs,
the wholeness she holds in the hollow
she has. We glance at the birds
the balance they make on
the way we connect—
that photo of you vibrates my pocket,
a ping from tower to tower, and I'm between
you and me. All of the you's. All of
the me's, a neck without itsell, an open
space under a floating mind, a speck
in the sky faint as a heated up cloud—
a dim knowing: once there were
so many birds on so many wires.
from the book STEM / Lost Horse Press
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
 A sternocleidomastoid is a muscle we humans have in our necks. Most humans have two, and the pair of them run diagonally down from the outside of our necks toward our sternums. I only have one as I lost the other in a surgery called a modified radical neck dissection. All living things lose stuff, and a sternocleidomastoid is one thing I lost. This poem wonders how much we can lose and still be ourselves. This poem supposes we need each other to survive all the loses, and this poem wonders who we need and why. I think the wires and the crows in the poem are a little bit strange, but I left them there because we are connected in such complicated ways, and I think crows are ominous creatures, perching on our complications, waiting for us to fall further to pieces. May we each yet hold it together.

Lisa Allen Ortiz on "Sternocleidomastoid"
Color image of the cover of Stephanie Niu's new chapbook, She Has Dreamt Again of Water
"She Has Dreamt Again of Water by Stephanie Niu"

"Niu’s poems are arias of love that present a powerful voice that reverberates through this collection. Niu presents the reader with an intricate presentation of the bonds of family and the slow, yet accelerating demise of the natural world. It the unmistakable love for both that makes this collection shine."

via FULL HOUSE LITERARY
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Color image of the cover of the collection Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms
What Sparks Poetry:
Olivia E. Sears on Ardengo Soffici's "Rainbow"

"It was striking to me that Soffici wrote this poem full of beauty and tenderness, while he was (simultaneously) preparing for war....Soffici had written years before about existential dread and about his efforts to combat the void: 'Art for me is the only way to escape the concept of nothingness that otherwise haunts and terrifies me.' In these poems, he filled that void with color, shape, sound, and alchemical transformation."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
Color photograph of the Vermont countryside
Apply to the Bread Loaf Translators' Conference
June 2 to 8, 2023

Join our award-winning faculty in the heart of Vermont’s Green Mountains for a week of introductory and advanced workshops along with an inspiring schedule of lectures, classes, and readings. Financial aid is available. Rolling admissions through February 15th. 
View in browser

You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2023 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency