There is a kind of worship in the early morning
young light tender on the hour (pale blue)
the table of the day wiped clean
You rise from your own skin like a ghost
and the names of things drift like snow
However much, there is still more
I know this—I know this
At this hour I believe almost anything
my finger to the slip, pink moon of skin
beneath the nail I flower twice, just like
I said I would
At this hour I remember a story
or I make one up, how an otherworldly exhalation
could scoop my soul from its happy coffer
like a loosed blue shadow
At this hour a waning solidity of being, my hand
on the city, my finger to the slip
the thought occurs—everything here belongs to you
The day (hard blue) folds
half past and then a quarter till
I have hands and hair and teeth again
—but I am as wayward and lopsided
as I have ever been
I am this close to being someone
—and to being someone else
I come closer even
Who hasn’t cut off their own
head by the time they turn 25?
—once at least
But my second self is out of patience
with my bad moods
She has climbed this ladder and others
She has leg muscles to carry her
all the way to blue and back again
There is divinity enough
in shape, she says
there is reason enough
in daylight
She says hold the phone
for heaven’s boy choir
—and I hold
My second self agrees to start
a girl band before she has heard
my singing voice
She waves in the blue wind like a flag
and yells up the stairs to come down
for dinner
She says eat, baby, eat and then
I will teach you how to lick your fingers
how to be a real fat cat kind of woman
My second self says I take too long in the shower
and she is wondering where I think the art
will come from—she says do the trick already
—finish or turn back
I take my second self to dinner
but she isn’t in the mood for sex
and she isn’t in the mood for conversation
pats her pockets for her phone keys
wallet portal to the depths of my being
She is grown tired, she says
she is grown heavy and now
she must grow back into me
like a hair on my leg or a lover
or a child who at last submits
to the summons of boredom
She is speeding toward me
like a ground ball ready to sleep
beneath my skin but first I have to ask
about this number of selves business
and also how to reach the corner
of my brain that I do like best
I mean how to get there reliably
not just shooting star
not just straight hand of pink starbursts
I shuffle myself like a deck of cards
and my fingers prune from the cold
I hold my hand to my stomach
my mouth to the sky my
second self melting
on my tongue
like snow or
medicine
And at
last I part
down the middle
like hair and at last
I find my chest flayed
open to the elements of feeling
Sonia Feldman is a poet and writer based in Cleveland, Ohio. She is currently working on a novel and a series of visual poems. She received her Master’s degree in the Humanities from the University of Chicago where she studied 18th century literature.
Lizzy Myers is a photographer living in Brooklyn, New York. Born on the other side of the country in San Francisco, she has spent her life in city spaces, longing for the great outdoors. Her photography emphasizes intimacy with her subjects, even as she works through the ways in which the medium facilitates escape. Her most recent show, Taaffe Place, featured portraits of the residents of the Taaffe Artist Lofts. Lizzy received her B.F.A. from California College of the Arts.