‘The Aureole’
— Nix Thérèse
From the outset, I love how this poem thrives on duality, acknowledging and questioning and weighing queerness in the same breath. “If I touch her there everything about me will be true” is a line that splits depending on gaze. There’s verification of the rumor that says loving another woman (to some) is not only an anomaly, but also a threat. Yet the speaker deeply knows this shift must take place. “True” isn’t just a mark of scorn, but adorns someone willing to walk in their own light, even as others attempt to snuff it out. Her newfound intimacy not only clarifies her position, but redefines her history: “I will be what Brenda Jones was stoned for […] My hand remembers, treading the watery room.” She now understands why she was affected by this violence, by her twin before she even recognized the connection. Even when the speaker couldn’t process the memory, her hand did. Her hand pulled her away from this inherent knowledge of herself, one that spilled out in tears and warped the room, yet here the hand comes back, comes good to the bodies & love once left.
“Our skin is one endless / prayer bead of brown” is so beautiful. I consider how often good disciplines will pass over the same bead: well-marked in time, refigured by oil and prints, a silent marriage of user & object. Another way to stay true? Consciously falling in & melding. The lover has “film reels for eyes,” as if one long & certain story is constantly being pulled across her being, what the speaker calls a “sexy transmission, despite the crowding of hurled red hots.” While the lover knows the gaze is on her, she doesn’t get ensnared, and the speaker’s reverence drenches this moment. Their symbiosis is the first time the speaker has ever been “endless,” fully thrown into the mouth of desire and unable to climb out, despite her near constant consideration of the consequences.
As the speaker finds new alignment, she still impacts other realms: “A gaggle of spooked / hens will fly up in my grandmother’s yard / never to lay another egg, just as I am jump- /ed, kneed, pulled finally to the high ground / of sweet clover.” Just as these hens suddenly become barren, so will the speaker not continue her bloodline. It’s seemingly disastrous for both to not provide & feed the family reproductively. Yet self-determination & care often means maintaining yourself despite others’ weighted expectations. Though it doesn’t come without pain (jumped & kneed aren’t exactly friendly ways to come into a new space), the clover that consistently lines the lover’s boots, dousing the speaker, feels like a lucky link, one that says, let us lie in the field when it suits us.