HIERARCHIES
with lines from Rilke’s First Duino Elegy
~
who
if I cried ~ even if
my tongue
twinned
my
mild disenchantress
my dreams
cold water splashed
with lemon ~
the way the air feels
sweet after suffocation
~
I
needed
& need had me
by the unclean
throat
whom could we ever turn to in our need
everything relying on
the simplest ~
kiss
the simplest
~
a spring flower floated
through memory
to my hand ~ to my silver vase
painted white ~ through memory
an early flower ~ the simplest
the beginning of terror
meaningless ~
under April’s morning smile
~
perhaps there remains
another
aching pleasure another
stripped down daze
a circling buzzard
seeming somewhat similar ~ another
who would come to me
the hardest part being
I hold myself back
~
oh and night ~ oh yes
it follows
like an untrained lover
lapping at
affected grace ~ I ask
full of infinite space
did you see my tongue split
sharp like sugarcane
the simplest ~
uncompromising
like the way I love
but a little less obvious ~
~
like a worm through snow
the way I move ~ I
moved in and never left
trapped within
the hermeticity of the city ~
where I live now ~ the simplest
springtime of my commute
settled square & center ribcage ~
standing clear of the closing
~
is the legend meaningless
meaningless ~
exhausted ~ & vestigial
uncomfortable but resigned
the simplest ~
exotic ~
floating away in every direction
~
and so I hold myself back and swallow
& so
like ~ the space between magnets
I blossom
in half ~
like this ~ I am
a language of gears
flush
matched
mated
like this ~
a distant organism
undressed by anguish ~ I
fling the emptiness out
~
don’t you know yet?
how hard I have been trying ~
a modest
molecule of myself ~
still just able to endure
don’t ask me please
I am tired of rubbing
this dry acre of skin ~
the simplest sky
hangs low
& waits in
an empty alley ~
as if I owe it money
~
my loose mouth
open ~ swallowing fog
inevitable ~ that wind
distracted by expectation
the simplest ~ unbearably
meaningless
being dead is hard work
& I’m performing poorly
~
the solitary heart so painfully meets
another
sometimes somewhat similar ~ so painfully
& still ~
approaching something gentle ~
the simplest
& still ~ still
in our interpreted world
we play at kindness
meaningless ~ alone
the simplest
serpentine tongue
relying on ~
a second ~
the simplest ~ kiss
.
.
Chase Berggrun is a genderqueer poet and the author of Discontent and Its Civilizations: Poems of Erasure, winner of the 2012 jubilat Chapbook Contest, and their work has been published or is forthcoming in Apogee, No Tokens, The Cortland Review, Cutbank, BOAAT, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. They are Poetry Editor at Washington Square Review, and an MFA candidate in Poetry at NYU.
