TWO POEMS by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
Microsatellites
Great-grandmother dreamed there were
two of you inside, two scorpions locked
by their tails, exoskeletons on fire, one
wearing great-grandfather’s face, she forgot
the other but remembered two mouths
exhaling water, I kissed them, she told me,
all four cheeks, she saw both of you split
the sky where you hunt the hunter and burn
eternal, felt both of you move, siblinged
under my skin, but in waking, we heard
one heartbeat, saw one skeletal outline,
more water than body, more animal
than arachnid, all you, untwinned, I was stung
twice, she said, and I asked her
if it hurt, only the first time, but the stars
never stop hurting.
Other women don’t tell you
you will forget
someone’s birthday
your son’s winter coat
at his grandparent’s when the weather turns cold
his fingertips and they aren’t blue
but a color for which there is
no name like the pain
of childbirth which they say you will forget
but you remember every splitting of your body
and instead forget the way your people suffered
saying there is no language for the cold they bore
no language for forgetting
and yet you manage it so easily
the way you fall asleep the way
the crescent moon hangs in the sky
like a closed eyelid the way its sliver
sunk snuck in even after you’d forgotten it
the way you forget forgetting
keep using the same word
despite its lack of meaning and you tried
to go and buy a new coat
one that would fit your son’s long torso
his arms stretching to his knees
but other women
didn’t tell you how he would grow
immeasurable the black sky at once
everywhere and nowhere the full
moon and the new and everything
that you’ve forgotten of that cold and night
of language your people’s birth-
and death-days frozen in his bones
though already the days grow longer now
by minutes only like his legs
more ready to walk away
