Kimberly Ann Southwick
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This Line Will Keep You Safe
after Julia Brandenberger’s “Funeral For Expectations” | January 2, 2020 | Philadelphia, PA
The women in the corridor with merry, choking laughter,
are be-lit behind a door closed to us, caved in darkness,
our backs against the studio walls, socked feet on bare wood.
The wicks on Julia’s candles dance like she does & then wild
with her rage at loss— the judgement card in the tarot deck
but knowing only how to be judged, not how to trust
that the way you move through a room holds beauty like light—
that the way you move through the room holds light like beauty.
The ghost she wrestles, slamming its head— her past sorrow, anger,
emptiness, fear—into the floor, does not put up a fight. The spirit world
& ringing bells & dancing fire help her process the world—
something larger than herself, but also herself, haunted hearts, &
a funeral for an abstraction another reason to wear her best black shirt.
The tender way she cradles its head when she places the limp ghost
against the wall. The line the candles drew maybe kept us safe from her ghost,
though not our own. How we wrestle with them, now that we know better how
to do so from her lesson in darkness, but not of it. Released to the corridor
to find our shoes, the yellow light is both what we expect and no longer
what we were taught to.
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Warm Coven
when you cannot tell if the magic is hidden
or has revealed itself wholly, undressed before you.
when you link his arm with yours & your body electric.
when summer is coughing like dying & at night so damp
the straightest hair curls. the outdoor shower, its wooden
floors, the warm puddles in the dark like blood.
his shoulder, its rigid muscles, the light of his face.
the fire, cedar & pine, the medium rare steak on the smoker.
when the sunset is candy, when the lights suffice, when the mugs
& cups hanging above from the nails are yours for the choosing.
when you bury yourself behind sunglass,
can’t dig yourself out to breathe, the last word lost.
when the voices, when the insects’ mating calls, when
the sound of him is a knell, the bells alive waking night.
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Kimberly Ann Southwick is the founder and editor in chief of the literary arts journal GIGANTIC SEQUINS, which has been in print for over eleven years. ORCHID ALPHA, her full-length collection will be published with Trembling Pillow Press in 2021, and a micro-chapbook of hers LAST TO BET: the near sonnets is appearing this summer via Ghost City Press. Kimberly lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, and is graduating with her PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette this May, having recently successfully defended her dissertation ALETHEIA, which includes a poetry manuscript, play, and essay on the poetics of hybridity. She tweets at @kimannjosouth; visit her at kimberlyannsouthwick.com for more.
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