Loosed Blue Shadow

Sonia Feldman

Lizzy Myers

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

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

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.