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poet.
performer. activist. teacher.
CONJURER
I wanted all my own stories all around me,
spread in circles spiraling out
from this point of light in the center,
where I sit, learning flame and glow
and something sort of like peace quickening,
outside of the darkness.
I wanted voice and keen, cry and caterwaul,
like stories unstuck in the throat,
like chords of muscle and neck tendon
flexing over glass shard
and someone else's glimmer.
Like the violet and blue light,
like the lightening I used to write about to
describe music to drown in...
Each voice its own tune
for the ache, the lonely child,
the prow in the cold water preening
through mist, nosing for land
and some voice, up there, singing
over the clatter of the lanyards, and
God's fingers rumbling the sky,
his sandals forgotten on the surface
of some ocean, or a sea.
There was story upon story, me left
and wondering at orphan's court, and at the
bands of women saying we must never tell,
learning silence as survival.
Until the tides between us
the flood ties and the moon's pull-
are so convoluted by what is spoken aloud
and what is not spoken aloud,
that we pray alone at the foot of Mary,
who all the while was pleading for a son.
We pray that the truths are not what lasts,
but are only stories we told or never told,
beneath her quickened eye, fitted and wondering
aloud at trust and duty and
an April's burning bush.
She dances rooted between not knowing and duty.
We dance.
We have all danced.
Every woman I have ever known has danced.
Like my many selves have danced and jigged
until I have felt the jangle, like a thread of
silver earring, too long and aching.
My body holding itself up by the shoulders
because my hips are so ground into the ground
from above that they cannot bear the weight of
anything except their own memories,
those memories that they carry
but do not tell
until I am pinioned in my sleep and choking, and
dancing, praying at the foot of another man, or
another god who left me here, or
the woman who brought him into this world
that we are still making
Excerpted from CONJURER, 2001 Dora E. McQuaid
From in the forthcoming chapbook shot with green
poems by Dora E. McQuaid, 2002 Dora E. McQuaid
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Dora
is available for readings, speaking dates, and workshops
on writing, creativity, and/or performance.
To discuss bookings with Dora, or to order books or cd's, please contact her at:
575.613.2947
doramcquaid@doramcquaid.com
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