ANNE LIVINGSTON

we may never get out

When your mouth is closed I want it opened, 
when your mouth is open I want my own mouth inside it. 
And here we are, coughing so hard we may as well be losing parts. 

This is a poem about how love invades 
the body, how love separates the body from itself.
Just look at what flies from my splitting lips, look at that 

spoonbill beak, the egret’s wavering tongue, the red-capped head 
of a sandhill crane. And what do you have 
to lose, besides a few hours of sleep? Besides, 

once the words come out they don’t belong to us, fragile 
machines that bore them, once the words come out they mean 
something else— uncontrollable, winged. 

They say if you push two mirrors together it makes infinity 
but I’ll believe that when I see it. You say you can 
never decide what comes first: 

the part where two become one or the part where we fall 
in. Hingeing on all this is a throat full of birds we may never get out. 
I mean to say, what’s another word for word? 

For something small and trembling in the palm of my hand, 
something so full of song it both wants to burst 
and whatever the opposite of burst is?

Retellings

My favorite fairytale took a woman’s voice and made it worth something 
so that when she spoke, jewels, flowers floated from her lips.
My father asked if I envied this trick but I was too afraid
of talking in my sleep— I could choke on a rosy tongue’s thorns, 
what about diamonds caught in my throat? I ruined the magic, 
he said, and shut the book, turned out the light.
This is how you tuck your children into bed at night.
Part of the story we never read out loud, 
where the stepsister got what she deserved, damned 
to spit toads and snakes in place of ugly words. 

Last week I found a piece
of another woman’s hair in my mouth
but was forced to swallow
when it would not come out. Don’t worry, she said, 
there is always more where that came from. 

If I had a daughter, I would pluck golden strands
off her own head to tie a blonde lock around her
ring finger until the feeling left. I would say, learn to talk
like this. There is always more where that came from.

The most beautiful place in America #7

I can tell you about the trees that dream of becoming horses, 
               trunks running infinite down til the sand turns cold, 

if you’ll tell me they never wake up, that their roots are cantering 
               green and fast enough to drown in this golden dust. 

After all, drowning is a most gorgeous way to outlive our lungs, 
               which trees have same as any other breathing body, 

we know this. We know how desperation tastes, like biting your tongue 
               in my mouth and not knowing where the blood came from, 

not wanting to know. Wanting no one to ever be able to know 
               about the time we saw our reflections in the river 

and called it liar where it didn’t mirror our two figures in one frame, 
               dissonance filling the gaps between us liquid as a hymn. 

So let me tell you about the trees, singing 
               to dirt as they unfurl deeper, deeper underground, 

and about us too, about what bursts forth above the roots' 
               longing, all these branches, their shadows too small to hide 

anything we want inside them— I want so much, so many parts 
               of you that they add up to more than you even are, more 

than you ever could be. How could I ask for all that, for all that 
               and whatever comes next? But tell me about the trees 

that dream of becoming horses, so I can tell you they never wake. 
               Then tell me where to place my hands, tell me where to dig.

Anne Livingston is a queer poet currently living in North Carolina where they teach high school writing, among other things. Their work is published or forthcoming in Diode, Iron Horse, Juke Joint, and Stone of Madness. They received a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship earlier this year. They do not believe dandelions to be a weed.