five poems
by Mackenzie Carignan
gathering 5
stop making promises of escape. exterior doors, windows,
archways. even a wall made of thread and netting. the king did not
mean for his reign to be the needle that poked holes in the fabric,
didn’t see it coming down the pike of royal servitude. the promise
only beckons to the lavender sprigs planted so closely to the
strawberry mint. weeds and the promise of infestation, even after
warning. it’s not a stem; it’s a system of roots. if there is a spring,
there is a bed, a berm. if you clip it, it will grow its own white
baby-hair roots as if it never had a bush. as if it never had a
network of roots so deep that ate me whole.
gathering 6
striking how the moments have space
between them
how quiet the quiet is
captured in unfurnished moments,
my own capturing
ripe in the tropical night
the click of tree frogs
illuminated
gathering 7
we speak of being broken
as if we have ever been
whole. today I cried for
saturn’s retrograde.
I had completely collapsed.
in the house,
they are piecing together
the beams so slowly.
only facades.
the effort to search for the place
where we are unbroken,
unbattered. even ballasted, scaffolded,
even held together with our own
bird-nested patch.
what is the red silk swaddling
with tiny yellow flowers? hold it.
the curious sound that a snap makes
when it fastens things together.
how can we be broken
when we are made of crevices
built to expand and contract?
when we are the soil underneath
the concrete
but not the concrete?
gathering 8
the debris
on the tabletop
was noise
to the king,
a sign of the
distinct clang
of shifting
and multiplying
in the distance
its natural, we say, to eat your young in this unsurvivable
wilderness. it is, in fact, a kindness. don’t be so emotional about
the sacrifice. who can survive in this duststorm? there is no sleep
when our prey is our beloved. there is no joy when the shadows
teem with kindling.
what will be
on fire
tomorrow?
we will barely
hear it coming,
but we will
know it by
its well-fitting
skin, its ability to pass
for victory.
gathering 10
she describes her hair as violin strings,
lost on what this regrowth might mean.
lost on what music still might manifest,
barreling forward despite how taut she
pulls the new hair that frames her face.
music here. drumbeat here. how do we
uncoil such a drastic instrument? how do we
teach ourselves to gather the percussive
tools that we need to steady ourselves
as we lockstep to the gathering spot.
BIO: Mackenzie Carignan is owner and founder of Creative Vision Lab, a creativity and writing coaching practice in Broomfield, CO. She is co-editor-in-chief of Switchback Books, a role she recently adopted. She has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from University of Illinois at Chicago, and her collection, a house without a roof is open to the stars, is available from Black Radish Books. Her work has appeared in lines+stars, Jet Fuel Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Poetry is Currency, South Dakota Review and others. She serves on the Broomfield Arts, History, and Cultural Council.