after Dorothea Grossman
It was your idea to teach me how to sleep
under the stars how to hold a gun how
to shoot it in the air and firework it
across the setting sun a silver dragonfly
with a singular purpose: to hunt
and snap its mouth around the sweetest bee—
pluck it right out of the air—
I didn’t know love could be so loud.
And once, the fields of soybean and mice
became a kind of prayer,
shushing tassels on the blown-back
calico curtains of your childhood bedroom
where you kissed me my shoulders
before the window— I never saw the ribs
of a silver silo that way again.
__________________________________
From Oceanic. Used with permission of Copper Canyon. Copyright © 2018 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of World of Wonders, an illustrated essay collection published by Milkweed Editions in September 2020, as well as of four books of poetry, including, most recently, Oceanic, winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Other awards for her writing include fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Mississippi Arts Council, and MacDowell. Her writing appears in Poetry, the New York Times Magazine, ESPN, and Tin House. She serves as poetry faculty for the Writing Workshops in Greece and is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.
