Poems by Zoë Brigley
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The planets
were how they mapped their lives. To know their motion meant knowing roughly how or who to love, in lines and orbits traced by gods – or goddesses – who believed in human longing, in giving up the body to pleasure, but also in pain, in punishment: the rapes of women that – in their telling over the years – became a story of simple seduction. To harness oneself to Eros meant fur and musk, light through the slats, a high, quivering note, the way the wind blows through blinds at my open window and sets the chimes to song, whispers over my skin where I lie on the bed thinking of you. If the wind can make music from the chimes, what could it make of me? Is it possible for this body to fully open to anyone, as the door of fear swings this way and that? I ask myself if it is possible for two to be equal, and now you won’t let me, won’t allow me to give too much. You keep on giving me everything I want. Here: my leg drapes over your leg, my head on your shoulder, and we fall together to a bottomless sleep. So much time wasted with men who made me – at best – a bowl for washing their hands. Remember you said: I go barefoot while they wear clogs, and I didn’t know a lover could be like that. Here you are shoeless and around you tiny buds are opening, unfurling; lips parting; skies deepening. Was it the planets that brought us, gliding like chess pieces across the checkered board? Now I am sighing, little moans to the open window, not caring about anything except you: teaching me everything I didn’t know about love, teaching me everything I had hoped was true. The Men We Are Meant To Love we were told about them as girls those men who would fuck you gently or hard depending on what you wanted men who never shamed you for the choices you made when you didn’t know those men going down on you in the shower one hand on each of your thighs and a tongue in your vulva men washing your hair gently with long firm fingers the men who would spoon you on nights when you slept with your fear or men who wanted to kiss you for hours or spend a day on each part of you oh those men who would cook delicious food that you would eat in bed before fucking again the men who sit and listen and say something in return that cracks open the egg of your knowing that coaxes out something that you didn’t see a shiny voice that makes you shudder with the great surprise of it what we wouldn’t do for those men what lengths we would go to what sweet intimacies we would spread before them what delicious ways to please we would find for those good men who feel it too who open up who read books and share who never spread their legs on the train or mansplain at meetings men who maybe groan at housework but do not expect a fanfare when stacking the dishes or plates do not grow bitter because they must do what their fathers never did those men who do not laugh with the boys at the stolen photo of a naked lover that a friend flashes on his phone do not shove a woman into the spare room at the college party do not touch the behind of their co-worker do not force their lover to have an abortion do not prevent their lover from having an abortion do not assume do not seize do not feel entitled do not do not do not and you my lover staring into the red distance are you one of those men or not? Published in Aubade After A French Movie (Broken Sleep, 2020). |
Zoë Brigley is editor of Poetry Wales, poetry editor at Seren Books, and she works at the Ohio State University English department, dividing her time between the US and Wales. She has three poetry collections, The Secret (2007), Conquest (2012) and Hand & Skull (2019) all from Bloodaxe Books and all Poetry Book Society Recommendations. See also her nonfiction essays Notes from a Swing State (Parthian 2019), and, with Kristian Evans, 100 Poems to Save the Earth (Seren 2021) and Otherworlds (Broken Sleep 2021). Recent chapbooks include Aubade After A French Movie (Broken Sleep, 2020) and Into Eros (Verve, 2021).
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