With A Garland Forlorn
rest within something so sweet and so clear take what is tender and healing bind
it with a garland forlorn a pity that you used to long for the ones who came before you
to have before you longed for them not to be there at all what has come now
what has come after here on the soft reclaiming wings of the morning that breathed
a sigh of content on the side of your face so sweet and so clear take into your arms
what you first carried in your womb that makes you feel the shedding of your clothes is
a sacrament rather than a sacrifice that makes your poor burning flesh
smell like your loved one who you always wanted to save take into your arms
what you first carried in your womb and stay
Uprooting the scion
It wakes to
It wants to rest
It wants to rest
It wants to rest
This has always
It dreams of
It dreams of
It dreams o
It dreams off
It prays to be
It prays to be
It prays to be
This has always
It binds
It binds
It binds
It transcends hope
It transcends hope
It transcends hope
This has always
its fingernails in a pile by its head
its head in the matriarch’s lap without
worrying that the purpose of the tender
is to draw it near and make it yielding
been
love not tying its arms behind
its back so loose it could slip
out from under it to become
unbidden
defenseless in the arms of a pity
so holy it tells it what it deserves
and what it does not
been
its graying hair around the wrists of
the fester and the rot donning the crown
of white lilies
as it is made the hecatomb woven into
the hair of those becoming in the palm
of wrath in the palm of the patriarch’s hand
been
Foreordination/Hope
in our birth / ever cyclical / under the durmast oak / its girth & senescence as inborn
as ours / He has made us lay as one / our tresses entangled & strained into the
Paternal Braid / He always told us / gentleness cannot be present in a togetherness
so incumbent / yet we kissed the teardrops clean from each other’s faces / as our
hands were enthralled in cradling one another’s / in fear I unbridle yours & / in
longing you tighten your hold on mine / you long to not be left behind again / but
why do you long if the answer has always been the same? / if your fate does not
depend on how tightly your hands are holding what you love? / if what you deserve
is contingent upon the one who forsook gentleness when laying us alongside one
another?
the durmast oak begins to loll unto us / you & I are built on the foundation of what
it means to obey / in this moment of rot & rasps / you show me we ever unbind the
Paternal Braid / through the mercy we have offered one another / inborn within the
mildness is an acceptance far too saccharine / for the fear & the longing to remain
unlinked / & in our death / ever cyclical / I understand that in fate we will fall away
from one another / & you understand that in longing our hands will cradle one
another’s once more
HALEY GREEN is a 22-year-old Appalachian-born poet currently residing in the rural Northwest with her cat. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various literary journals, including Sand Hills Literary, Cathexis Northwest Press, Vellichor Literary, and more. Alongside reading and writing poetry, she enjoys tending to farm animals and sewing.