Free Verse Editions, 2023, 90 pp.
Intaglio
As Moses was dying, we stood poised
to cross over the Jordan,
to finally enter into the land.
For forty years we had wandered
the desert wilderness.
We were tired. We wanted a home,
We just wanted to unpack.
We didn’t think to ask
what we might lose,
what it would cost us to satisfy
this need for domesticity, this need
to be crated every night.
Now, we traipse back
into the wilderness
to search for God, stand
at a precipice, look
for what is unknown, unfamiliar,
uncomfortable. My husband
has turned to intaglio, looking
for that seditious discomfort,
the newness, then the slow mastery
that shifts attention away
from the tools. They fade
to transparent, YOUR hands
reach through them, he briefly
become holy.
—as if YOU had them—
—after Psalm 86 lines 1-7
unable to eat enough to feel full or to drink enough
to feel drunk currently unable to hear YOU—
Could it be YOUR turn to listen?
I place these days in YOUR hands
—as if YOU had them—
I am keeping a cryolog —where I log
all my tears and all my waiting for tears
—e.g. today I almost cried but I didn’t feel
quite enough —like a failed
orgasm —so close— but nothing.
Could YOU lift up my heavy listening—this unbearable
silence —which I have allowed—
Do YOU hear a whisper in YOUR
constant night —and then listen?
✶✶✶✶
Donna Spruijt-Metz is a poet, a psychology professor, and a recent MacDowell Fellow. Her first career was as a classical flutist. She lived in the Netherlands for 22 years and translates Dutch poetry to English. Her poetry and translations appear in Copper Nickel, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, the Tahoma Literary Review, the Inflectionist Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbooks are Slippery Surfaces (Finishing Line Press) and And Haunt the World (a collaboration with Flower Conroy, Ghost City Press). Camille Dungy (Orion Magazine) chose her full-length General Release from the Beginning of the World (January 2023, Free Verse Editions) as one of the 14 Recommended Poetry Collections for Winter 2022.
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