POETRY
Only Rock
limestone
there’s not much i can do
for this type of wound.
these are fragments we can’t
remember into a body.
shale
try lovage, linden, lotus,
tie a root around your neck.
laurel, lavender, lady’s thumb,
sever the part that might know.
sandstone
“we were going by the book,
but the damned mountain couldn’t read”
granite
witness to fading,
to the grief living in their shoulders,
to the shaping of god
through the scraping away
glacial till
they’ve perfected a system
to level this topography.
it lays flat,
no longer attuned
to receive soothing.
sand
i can no longer continue
to build a home upon
this scrap heap of unfeeling.
blue clay
maintain a wide vision
to resemble a body.
silt
the water left me
one thousand three hundred miles away
in the mouth of a river that filled up
and spilled ever into
the non-matter of this beauty
Madeleine Kannan is a social worker, artist, poet, and musician based in Seattle.