ADVENT DAY TWENTY-FIVE: Marina Blitshteyn!

prayer

don't go with a heavy heart, no, go

with sure steps, go with solace

knowing anywhere you go you are

yourself there, knowing anywhere

you go you go there knowingly, go

there knowing yourself, go there

knowing you've earned it, go there

underestimating the risk, like a new

wild animal into the wild, a wilder

version of yourself, instinctual and

calm, go there willingly with your

free heart or go there not at all, no,

do not go timidly into that ancient

wildness leaping in yourself, go now

Marina Blitshteyn is the author of Nothing Personal from Bone Bouquet Books. She works as an adjunct instructor. 

DAY 25 * MARINA BLITSHTEYN!

an erasure of x

Negative Space

      a date

last winter, December.

They take your eyes,

your voice

     to fill the empty

spaces        between the arms

You doubt the lot will end you

    the knot            so tight

        without space

*****

We're all going to do what we need to do.

x

Seize

Take a taste

of sand.

And then

      speak             the words

God taught to you,

:

“My life is the life of just one

         and when it ends

     solve it with your                tongue.”

MARINA BLITSHTEYN is the author of Russian for Lovers (Argos Books) and $kill$, forthcoming from dancing girl press. She works as an adjunct instructor and occasionally curates the la perruque performance series. This poem is from a manuscript titled The HA.

Curatorial note: The following poems are a response to a call for poetry about rape culture for the annual Delirious Advent Feature; the call is in turn an immediate response to the Rolling Stone story “A Rape on Campus” about rape culture at the University of Virginia. However, they are also part of a larger conversation about rape in poetry communities. Curated by Jessica Smith and Susana Gardner.