Morning and evening, I declutter my heart the thing you call an altar.
The love I may never experience, children I might never have, I lay on the altar.
The waters in the beginning, were they liquid? I prefer them mist, for the spirit
to resist gravity with. For my heart to know you, allow me to rewrite, to alter.
The time I was named unkind for being unhappy, the grip that tightened and turned
into smother, the time that was not my own, asking me, nailing me, to stay on the altar.
What the moth doesn’t destroy: snotty tissues beneath the bed, dust, the anxiety
of old journal entries, juddering ink lines. Between us, it is I who falters.
When I wake, my spine creaks from prostration.
This casket of my body please turn to clay on the altar.
A sad lightning is a smile, my blind friend Fritz told me, making lightning bolts of splinters
stacked up and nailed. The face’s crack. Truth through breakage, ways of seeing altered.
When I hugged her yesterday, ear to ear, I couldn’t distinguish whose heartbeat was whose.
This gospel of friendship: to fill a clawfoot bath with tulips, climb in and play on the altar.
Imagine if my name was Chance, raised accepting that I might amount to nothing.
Imagine the peace of that: the self allowed to (f- ) alter.
Let me ululate, hurl back the vowels faultily tuned in my throat, belonging nowhere.
My breath––Firth of Forth, Belfast shipyard, ConEd manhole steam––I spray
on the altar: sea thrift growing out of coastline rock: the metamorphic self:
the alter. I am dust. I pray on the altar,
declutter my heart.
I sway on the altar.
Alter,
I say on the altar
Alter
Altar.
And God said, I am
in the liquor store. So, I turned away
from the white clapboard chapel, towards
the mural of the drugged-up squirrel, dis-
belief, a mucus clogging in my throat.
And God asked me, Where are you
right now? Somewhere concrete
and unromantic. My neck and head
hurting (from three coffees and no water),
lonely and anonymous. I am thirsty. I am
impatient. Grateful for this quiet place, people
talking on the sidewalk, the sound of car engines
changed (made softer?) by the sunshine. I am
disappointed by everything. And God
said, If Jonathan Edwards can see Christ
in an icky little silkworm, surely you can see
me here inside: the store, the bottle, the cashier, Neil
Young singing from the crackling speakers. Taste
and see me. In the malbec that will stain your teeth,
make laughter unravel faster from the tight coiled
centre of your body (your name is stained
into my hands, your name which means ‘delight’,
tough stain that time cannot wash out), and in the mescal’s
smoke like the physical trace of my presence
back in the days of Moses. I am not
where you expect. Verily. I am here,
you are here. Verily verily.
She places a brown egg in my hand
curves her fingers gently round mine
guiding them into the shape of a cage.
Now, clench. It feels wrong––
the sudden release of structure,
the walls collapsing and sticky
liquid slipping out––even though
I don’t remember anyone telling me
outright, “Do not crush a raw egg
in the palm of your hand.”
The tiny shards of shell try to cut
into my skin but my skin
is thick. There is no blood
or pain––I see the yolk, la cœur
d’œuf, she jokes, a handheld sun,
small sphere shining, breaking
at one finger-prod––only my own
nails digging purple crescent
punishments into my palm,
and from its heart, small yellow
rivers flow down my pale arms.
Have you noticed
this sand
in my open blisters?
Yes, daughter. [There is sea-
glass lodged between his toes.]
The sand dunes
infested with ticks?
[Without turning behind him to look]
The bugs are invisible, my daughter.
But they are real and this clamshell shard,
do you see it?
[He stares at the rouging sky above the sea
the petal shade of dog rose then darker
rosehip––I feel myself growing
impatient]
This shell [I’m pressing
its sharp edge into my palm––]
Daughter! [His eyes and voice, watery.]
How close the word bedroom is
to boredom?
Yes––and violets
to violence. Well?
what will you do? We can’t
just sit here––
Also, untie to unite.
I need you to say more
than a flimsy proverb––
The letter kills but the spirit gives life.
Neither can hold my friend when she is alone
at night. Will the stars ever dwell with the dust?
Yes, already, my daughter.
But we’re not even really here––my bedside
table is a plastic cart from Target, piled with scrap
paper to-do lists getting longer––I want
the fleshiness of Herbert’s Christ. I hate
that you are just a figment
in this room. [In my mind’s ear,
he goes quiet. In my mind’s eye,
he shows me his hands.
They are my friend Milena’s: her tendons
sturdy like a workwoman’s, muscular
from playing piano. A line from a book
comes to my mind:] We are only alive
to the degree that we let ourselves be moved.
And the book is lying
open on my desk, underlined.
Kate Millar is a poet and essayist from Edinburgh, Scotland, currently based in Brooklyn. Her work appears in atmospheric quarterly, Ekstasis, Gutter, Inflectionist Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. When not writing, you can find her at an indie music gig in Brooklyn, psychoanalyzing her dreams, or doing arts and crafts with her friends.
The fad for eye miniatures in England began when the future King George IV fell in love with Maria Fitzherbert, a woman unsuitable to his rank (widowed, Catholic, a commoner). He covertly sent her a painting of his eye with a proposal to marry. The overture was welcome, and after a long and tumultuous relationship, he was buried with a painting of her eye. From Public Domain Review, text by Sasha Archibald.
