by Shannan Mann
What is moved by water cannot be
moved by light. When light enters
water it slows down & changes
direction. Like a thin ripple
on a lake, I do not need
to swallow. Hunger
is often enough to make
water into light & the other
bodies of water like humans
who are bodies of water
drinking water for warmth.
Green ducks wade into water
to reflect. Rivers bring that out
in a person, a crocodile, a canoe,
a duck. Your body is a bird
that enters my river
& turns to find a lamp
burning like a last word
over the whipping tongue
of each wave. You do
not slow though I still think
you will. What maker
makes the unmoving move
& the moving still? If you look
in a mirror, why do you expect
to see someone else? You need
an ocean because you possess
a compass & raft. Rain is seasonal.
The sun comes every day even
when we don’t need heat or light
or want to feel yellow or loved.
I love you, the rain says to each droplet
even though it is each droplet.
Light is a wave without liquidity.
Day in day out, even nights sometimes,
I farm my loneliness until it is a herd
of cattle pounding along the paddocks
raised with love to be slaughtered
with love. Do people still eat animals?
The world eats less meat than ever
before. The world eats the world
& is full at last. Who would choose
flow over lull? Would you pick a love
that trickles honey or floods poison?
One is quicker, the other thickens
the longer you let it stick into black
moist mud. I kneel when it rains.
Something about being wet
inside & outside. A picture
of birds will never get wet, an inner
oil veining their feathers, blessing
them waterproof. What a life!
Live in water, drink water, fuck
in water, die in water, but never
drown in its light. I pray
no one ever has to disentangle
weeds from seedlings, that rain
could linger in sunlight,
as easily it exists in me & you
every night before it dissipates.
A bird in the water breaking
the surface mistaking tears
for truth, its youth
for beauty & light blood
on our lips after a kiss
for cruelty.
SHANNAN MANN has been awarded or placed for the Palette Love and Eros Prize, Foster Poetry Prize, Peatsmoke Summer Contest, Rattle Poetry Prize, Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize and Frontier Award for New Poets. Her poems appear in the Literary Review of Canada, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. Find her at https://linktr.ee/shannanmania
There are no birds on Jupiter & water is light years away was edited by Sonia Urlando. It can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 6.1.
