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 New York Times bestselling author of two illustrated collections of essays: Bite by Bite and World of Wonders, chosen as Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year and as a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She has published four award-winning poetry collections and spent a decade serving as the poetry editor for environmental magazines, first for Orion and then Sierra. A professor of English and creative writing for more than twenty-five years, she gives firefly tours for Mississippi State Parks and lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with her family.
