doula of breach by Eimear Laffan

November 20, 2023
Poem title: doula of breach: a zuihitsu Poet name: Eimear Laffan Poem: 1. morning broken open by chainsaw / I handpick twigs / from this curated nest / you can be born again / if not from the womb / from the wound / if not from the wound / from its echo / in every wager and every water / an elongated winter in the wake / ossification complete / memory jammed in sutures / how fall reverberates / the fell renegotiating space 2. swifts descend on the evening chimney / scissor the air clear / a collocation of confinement / in the soot throat / Beckett understood / the nothingness that leans / fast into ruin / the mind that spills 3. you think too much said a friend / an assertion she has long forgotten / knowing nothing of how words cure / I cannot forget / I was born of a breach / into the wound of a body / I wish and wallow in this immurement / thrash against its frame / only a tiny stone to orient / listen otolith / the body is an anchorite / solitary in space 4. ravens at the outflow / caw for the channel / to spit the redfish out / the beach a potter’s field / gills stained in hoarfrost / sockets picked clean / further along the strand / a child takes a line for a walk / drags a stick through sand 5. the naturalist names / the birds we hear / nuthatch chickadee o a wren / an excerpt from the aviary of her brain / the dipper’s head goes under / the ribbon of water / does the animal smell the relict / or listen past / the decibels of water / to the pitch beyond rot 6. the chickadees emerge / from the charred birch / careen close to the scalp / a caress to raise a coffin lid / blue moves around the body / like water like grief / the sunflowers fall over / the long of their own stems 7. the girl holds a conch shell / to the mallet of her ear / even the gift of the sea / is received as salt / cruelty a child not told / the one hundred iterations of placenta / the one hundred and eight beads of mala / ricochet off the ground / each rose quartz tear-drop an anemone / a daughter of the wind 8. a northern pygmy scans the skyline / for satiety in the form of a songbird / it’s not yet nightfall / not yet winter / Persephone packs her bags for the underground / does she love / what she walks toward / how long does it take / to acclimate to darkness’s depth / where the eternal unseen / doula of breach / awaits his ward of division 9. maples set against snow clouds / the leaves golden / the cold ancient / I wrote love in Ogham / painted shaky lines with my unlovely hands / waves across a spine / the vortex of emptiness swells / the last leaves resist separation / cleave to the bough 10. the golf course follows / the topography of ground / the pond an imperfect oval / edged with reeds / the tallest sisters fold over the scab / no wildflowers in attendance / no songbirds at the ear / oh for a sister / to split loyalty beyond water / crimson laughter lines bleed / from the woodpecker’s beak 11. icicles grip a fallen log / a season hard with knowing / my love conceived / in a dusk of brine / mimics the mute snow / only the brass fish hazards to intervene / plinks against the post / when the wind lifts / its small frame 12. mountains stretch / on all sides / the sky a sieve / all day long / no poem ever ends Valéry says / the tide comes in comes in comes in / this long-drawn christening End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Eimear Laffan Previously published in aboutness, McGill Queen’s University Press, 2023. Eimear Laffan’s aboutness was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2023. She was a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Emerging Poetry Prize in 2022. You can find her work in Ambit, Funicular, Geist, The Ex-Puritan, wildness, and in the League of Canadian Poets Visual Poetry Anthology, Spectral Lines. She lives in Nelson, British Columbia.