Dislocation
I was hiking when my torso, it twisted. My left arm, it fell out. I felt the two knobs where my shoulder had been, swept my finger across the bottom of the empty cup. When my husband saw me fall he said Oh shit. Three men ahead on the trail came back. I couldn’t move. My husband lifted his binoculars and looked downriver. He handed them to the strangers who took turns looking and shaking their heads. I could see the shadow of my arm reaching out of the rapids. I could hear the river cry out for help.
Autumn, with Dog
You wait too long to pick up
dog shit in the backyard and the world
decides on early winter, fast fall, so leaves
flurry and snow slimes an afghan across
your lawn and now,
you pull back brown
upon shiny brown with a rake, its handle
slick with shit as you intermittently pick up
logs, nuggets, wet smears with your right hand
cleverly you thought shoved inside a plastic
glove, laying each leave-wrapped morsel
like stuffed grape leaves into a grocery bag, raking
with both hands, arms, abs, back, muscles, body
overheating but unable to remove your gray scarf
at least without shittying up your face and coat, so
you plow on
piling up little piles of shit and leaves
around the yard because pulling them all
into one pile is exhausting, hoping
the dog doesn’t leap joyously into them, taking it
as a lesson to remember to pick up the shit more
often, to move to a warmer state maybe, or better yet
a colder state where crap will stay frozen
and whole, where always the sun on your face,
white snow illuminating the ice-coated limbs
of everything, while the Osage orange—its last
overgrown, yellow globe—
relieves itself into the mess.
Yew
To understand the Yew tree, I was directed
toward death. To Celtic roots, to Christian roots,
past spells of resurrection, past Christians
who banished Yews from churchyards, who then
planted Yews in churchyards, who then erected
churches beside ancient Yews—with time it has grown
harder, like Yew bark, to know what’s true. So
I vine through copses, dive into corpses, listen
to their past. In the UK, tourists climb
walls meant to protect a 5000-year-old
Fortingall Yew, snapping branches, taking
home pockets of needles. The weight
of so many ribbons stresses the tree.
In Yellowstone, visitors chip fossilized
bark from Redwoods. In Nova Scotia, it’s fossils
from the Bay of Fundy’s protected cliffs.
We all want so much to capture time in our hands,
to look it in the eye and say, Got ya. In Utah,
in Sweden, clonal colonies of trees have roots nearly
10,000 years old. When you hold your child’s hand
your arm is a branch from which springs a twig.
Look into your lover’s eyes and you will see
the leaves of time spiraling out from her pupil
like roots into another galaxy, which it is.
Dislocation
I was hiking when my torso, it twisted. My left arm, it fell out. I felt the two knobs where my shoulder had been, swept my finger across the bottom of the empty cup. When my husband saw me fall he said Oh shit. Three men ahead on the trail came back. I couldn’t move. My husband lifted his binoculars and looked downriver. He handed them to the strangers who took turns looking and shaking their heads. I could see the shadow of my arm reaching out of the rapids. I could hear the river cry out for help.
Autumn, with Dog
You wait too long to pick up
dog shit in the backyard and the world
decides on early winter, fast fall, so leaves
flurry and snow slimes an afghan across
your lawn and now,
you pull back brown
upon shiny brown with a rake, its handle
slick with shit as you intermittently pick up
logs, nuggets, wet smears with your right hand
cleverly you thought shoved inside a plastic
glove, laying each leave-wrapped morsel
like stuffed grape leaves into a grocery bag, raking
with both hands, arms, abs, back, muscles, body
overheating but unable to remove your gray scarf
at least without shittying up your face and coat, so
you plow on
piling up little piles of shit and leaves
around the yard because pulling them all
into one pile is exhausting, hoping
the dog doesn’t leap joyously into them, taking it
as a lesson to remember to pick up the shit more
often, to move to a warmer state maybe, or better yet
a colder state where crap will stay frozen
and whole, where always the sun on your face,
white snow illuminating the ice-coated limbs
of everything, while the Osage orange—its last
overgrown, yellow globe—
relieves itself into the mess.
Yew
To understand the Yew tree, I was directed
toward death. To Celtic roots, to Christian roots,
past spells of resurrection, past Christians
who banished Yews from churchyards, who then
planted Yews in churchyards, who then erected
churches beside ancient Yews—with time it has grown
harder, like Yew bark, to know what’s true. So
I vine through copses, dive into corpses, listen
to their past. In the UK, tourists climb
walls meant to protect a 5000-year-old
Fortingall Yew, snapping branches, taking
home pockets of needles. The weight
of so many ribbons stresses the tree.
In Yellowstone, visitors chip fossilized
bark from Redwoods. In Nova Scotia, it’s fossils
from the Bay of Fundy’s protected cliffs.
We all want so much to capture time in our hands,
to look it in the eye and say, Got ya. In Utah,
in Sweden, clonal colonies of trees have roots nearly
10,000 years old. When you hold your child’s hand
your arm is a branch from which springs a twig.
Look into your lover’s eyes and you will see
the leaves of time spiraling out from her pupil
like roots into another galaxy, which it is.
Listen the audio recordings of these poems below:
Dislocation
Autumn, with Dog
Yew
Michelle Bonczek Evory
Michelle Bonczek Evory is the author of The Ghosts of Lost Animals, winner of the Barry Spacks Award and a 2021 Independent Publisher Book Award. Her book Naming the Unnameable: An Approach to Poetry for New Generations (Open SUNY Textbooks) is taught in creative writing courses globally. She live s in the Pacific Northwest with her poet husband and too many animals. She is a creative writing instructor and mentor at The Poet’s Billow and can be found at www.michellebonczekevory.com.
