You Are Perfectly
The organ knows its place
filling its hands with nesting birds & conserving its locked music
for human touch. You assume the burning
belongs to you anytime there is fire.
Note your tendency to overwork anything you do.
Where is this baby, the 15-ounce royal
vegetable gendering itself in your uterus?
She is made from dogs & the blind music
your throat makes at love. You are no better
at growing babies than other mothers.
Though maybe marriage is a pole you climb each morning,
there is no fire. I have sensed
your nest & its scant hollows. The birthed
eggs wiped clean from slick & feather.
I hold your hair back from its vomit.
My thumbs find the hollows behind your ears
& draw circles there. I recite anything I can remember,
the recipe for brown bread, the dates of saints,
the alphabet of rain spelling itself on the roof.
A bird once flew directly into the car radiator.
There was sound & burning. But nothing
to mourn & no real reason to stop.
There is no help for this. An organ makes
no promises. There is the box
& the bulk. Nests of unborn song.
It’s just furniture if you have no hands.
Burning is a form of arrogance. You must learn to
climb the pole with your mouth.
by Emily Vizzo
filling its hands with nesting birds & conserving its locked music
for human touch. You assume the burning
belongs to you anytime there is fire.
Note your tendency to overwork anything you do.
Where is this baby, the 15-ounce royal
vegetable gendering itself in your uterus?
She is made from dogs & the blind music
your throat makes at love. You are no better
at growing babies than other mothers.
Though maybe marriage is a pole you climb each morning,
there is no fire. I have sensed
your nest & its scant hollows. The birthed
eggs wiped clean from slick & feather.
I hold your hair back from its vomit.
My thumbs find the hollows behind your ears
& draw circles there. I recite anything I can remember,
the recipe for brown bread, the dates of saints,
the alphabet of rain spelling itself on the roof.
A bird once flew directly into the car radiator.
There was sound & burning. But nothing
to mourn & no real reason to stop.
There is no help for this. An organ makes
no promises. There is the box
& the bulk. Nests of unborn song.
It’s just furniture if you have no hands.
Burning is a form of arrogance. You must learn to
climb the pole with your mouth.
by Emily Vizzo
Emily Vizzo is a San Diego poet, journalist, and educator whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in FIELD, Blackbird, jubilat, The Journal, North American Review, and The Normal School. Her essay, “A Personal History of Dirt,” was listed as a notable essay for Best American Essays 2013. A San Diego Area Writing Project fellow, Emily Vizzo serves as assistant managing editor at Drunken Boat, volunteers with VIDA, Poetry International and Hunger Mountain, and teaches yoga at the University of San Diego.