STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
JENNIFER K. SWEENEY & L.I. HENLEY
Today I am not angry with the doves—
the way they lay their eggs on the narrowest
of ledges or on my sloping roof.
I swear some of them let go mid-flight.
Still I sweep the shells into a dustpan, blast the yolks
with a hose so my dogs won’t get sick.
I tell myself it’s honest
to keep house, to arrange dust—for what is
our solar system but dust
displayed in the most pleasing of shapes?
Tomorrow there will be new signs
that what we love is only ever spared by chance,
the paper-thin remnants of our little houses
scattering in four directions,
the hard earth. As I write this
there are children crying for their parents
in Texas detention centers. Tents. Does such a place
as home exist? It’s noon and I wonder
what lunch is like, if they ever got baths
and was the water warm,
and who could betray a child
with a blanket made of plastic,
who could stand the rustle of small bodies
fighting sleep in metallic cocoons,
listen to the cries
coming from everywhere?
Other times the wind is merciful,
carries the shells away before I wake, brings me golf balls,
fuchsia crowns of wild onion,
and other apologies half-whispered in the night.
I let myself be fooled just enough to sleep,
tell myself each injustice won’t be the last, but
in this wind, every hour is for mending,
gathering flimsy twigs, plaiting sorrow
and plume, making it work,
rebuilding a heart on the narrowest of ledges,
sloped roof poised above
so much hard earth.
My first instinct is to flinch, say
weakness, the slack map of surrender.
I have met people my whole life who gave
no fucks, none at all and this was a mantra
they wore bold as leather pants and gold lamé
astonished I was to study the assurance
of their bristle their brushback against any
question they didn’t want to answer, no
slinking away from the gesture, no shrinking
voice but the whipcrack of not-just-no but
I don’t care I don’t give a rat’s ass
a flying fuck a shit a should a pity party
I don’t waver here don’t quiver I can send
my no’s up like casual sparks and walk away
unscathed. What rugged glory did these people
come from? The ones who hold the line, who
bear their refusal as a badge: who bore them,
what roaring bern? what burnished spoonful?
I’ve given out care like party favors, like prayer cards
on a street corner, drenched in the kind of yes
that could erode the “I” to a quarter rest,
receding note, breathing the puff of cold air
back in. So has it been a failure to keep myself
righted? But also any time I look into someone’s eyes
and plead the dire moment’s please—
open the airplane door, give me five more minutes,
let me change my answer, my mind, stay a little
longer, if I run keep this for me, tell no one—
and the person, usually a stranger, has softened
the mask, authority briefly shearing which looks like
the onset of dusk and from the cooling blues,
the voice says okay shhh, then come.
I remember these moments like silver threads
when the hand turned the knob and creaked me in or
let me go and I was a little bit saved.
There’s so little I can do for people
but when they say it’s been hard because it has
or because they are lying, it doesn’t matter,
I don’t need the proof of story,
and to please please if I can, I swoosh them forward,
hand over the money, change the form and hope
they land in a place that feels like not being alone.
If the night needs to be nursed to lay back down.
If the sky says break me open a little right here.
L. I. Henley is the author of Whole Night Through (What Books, forthcoming), Perugia Press Prizewinner Starshine Road, These Friends These Rooms, and two chapbooks. She lives in Joshua Tree, California, and teaches at Crafton Community College.
Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of Little Spells (New Issues Press), How to Live on Bread and Music, which received the James Laughlin Award, the Perugia Press Prize and a nomination for the Poets’ Prize, and Salt Memory. She lives in Redlands, California, and teaches at the University of Redlands.
