Nicole Rollender
In the Silence After the Other Driver T-Boned Our Car, I Looked
Into the Rear-View Mirror to See if My Children Were Alive
If I’m not dead, it feels as if I am, waking into a haze: this memory
through leaves turning to mirage. Because there was a hawk,
his heart circling in a slow metronome as glass prismed into our
hair. You inhabited a lost country I can never remember―
within me, one I am sick for—there’s no returning. Because I thought
I’d never be a mother—that desire never pitting in my gut
as a calm gravity—no glory in planting tiny bones—fingers my ribcage’s
marginalia. A statue of a Madonna on a lawn beyond. My heart’s
sad tap dance—what predawn dreams in the womb, me leading
my daughter to a field where a white mare dozed, her foal
lifting its head toward my child who saw something of herself—their
newness that’s already waning—a knotting together that prepared
them for disassembling—it’s been like waiting for a ghost—I’m holy,
winded, full of panic—I’m tired of being in a body—yet I lived,
lived—if there was a way to turn my bone broth to light because living
this way—head knocked this way, brain bruised—because all
I can do is bend and pick my children as daisies—place them
behind my ears—these days I feel like I’m walking
to the world’s edge—when I look over—my children shine―
when the glass prismed—when they first realized bodies could break―
when my head hit—when my shoulder blades knocked loose—when
what I wanted—flight, to hold their tiny skulls in my arms—when
I think I am no longer a mother—a mother who doesn’t have the chance
to walk back—to hold a baby in the middle of a field—to say,
my bones are in you—if I go to the sky—if I, if I—I can’t bear this, to die.
Nicole Rollender is editor of Stitches. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, The Journal, Radar Poetry, Salt Hill Journal, West Branch, Word Riot and others. Her first full-length poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love, is forthcoming from ELJ Publications. She is the author of the chapbooks Arrangement of Desire (Pudding House Publications), Absence of Stars (dancing girl press & studio), and Ghost Tongue (Porkbelly Press, 2016). She’s the recipient of poetry prizes from CALYX Journal, Ruminate Magazine and Princemere Journal. Find her online at nicolerollender.com or facebook.com/nicole.rollender.
Return to November 2015 Edition
Into the Rear-View Mirror to See if My Children Were Alive
If I’m not dead, it feels as if I am, waking into a haze: this memory
through leaves turning to mirage. Because there was a hawk,
his heart circling in a slow metronome as glass prismed into our
hair. You inhabited a lost country I can never remember―
within me, one I am sick for—there’s no returning. Because I thought
I’d never be a mother—that desire never pitting in my gut
as a calm gravity—no glory in planting tiny bones—fingers my ribcage’s
marginalia. A statue of a Madonna on a lawn beyond. My heart’s
sad tap dance—what predawn dreams in the womb, me leading
my daughter to a field where a white mare dozed, her foal
lifting its head toward my child who saw something of herself—their
newness that’s already waning—a knotting together that prepared
them for disassembling—it’s been like waiting for a ghost—I’m holy,
winded, full of panic—I’m tired of being in a body—yet I lived,
lived—if there was a way to turn my bone broth to light because living
this way—head knocked this way, brain bruised—because all
I can do is bend and pick my children as daisies—place them
behind my ears—these days I feel like I’m walking
to the world’s edge—when I look over—my children shine―
when the glass prismed—when they first realized bodies could break―
when my head hit—when my shoulder blades knocked loose—when
what I wanted—flight, to hold their tiny skulls in my arms—when
I think I am no longer a mother—a mother who doesn’t have the chance
to walk back—to hold a baby in the middle of a field—to say,
my bones are in you—if I go to the sky—if I, if I—I can’t bear this, to die.
Nicole Rollender is editor of Stitches. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, The Journal, Radar Poetry, Salt Hill Journal, West Branch, Word Riot and others. Her first full-length poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love, is forthcoming from ELJ Publications. She is the author of the chapbooks Arrangement of Desire (Pudding House Publications), Absence of Stars (dancing girl press & studio), and Ghost Tongue (Porkbelly Press, 2016). She’s the recipient of poetry prizes from CALYX Journal, Ruminate Magazine and Princemere Journal. Find her online at nicolerollender.com or facebook.com/nicole.rollender.
Return to November 2015 Edition