Blue Manifesto Letter from the Editor
Playlist
Not Full Enough
Henri Bergson on Possibility and Creation
Dirt Poem
Rachel Wolfe
recently, i wrote a poem about being
a poisoned plant
you know, damaged roots, etc
a little on the nose, maybe, but
something i needed to get out.
i remember being 11 and writing a poem
in a speckled composition notebook
about blooming
I felt it in my chest–I was certain
that one day I’d stain the sky.
i remember sharing the poem with a friend and they said
“awwwww! rachel, that’s really nice!” and i wanted to say
“no i’m serious
one day the sky will be purple”
but i just smiled & died a little inside.
i remember being 21
& the look on that girl’s face
when she heard
that mean thing
i said about her
i didn’t see her face
but i remember it still–
i see it in my own
watery silhouette
bent over the surface
of the lake.
i remember being 22
after my dad died, I wrote a poem
in a stray word document,
the first i had written in years,
about ink.
i was watching rain hit
the surface of that lake—
how could something sound so peaceful
when so much turmoil is concealed
underneath?
with wet shoulders i started thinking
about inky-
depths, the lake floor
where creatures grow
that inaccessible darkness where vertebrae should be crushed
under the pressure of all that unknowable water but
no they keep swimming
Their superpower being
that they are made
of water
like I am made
of ink.
Between that dark lake
and that purple sky is
solid ground.
Could ink, from a pen, fertilize it?
It looks like it might, so black that it shines
purple, so pervasive that it stains
as it seeps.
With enough ink
the solid ground could become
Dirt again–Dirt that streaks your skin
with muddy words
Dirt that you know
like, when your fingernails are black, but from digging in a garden–
as opposed to that kind of dirt you feel dripping from your breasts as the
machine of city summer squeezes you
or that you feel sliding
into your pores
when that man keeps
“having you”
and you feel
your self
slipping–
or maybe when
you can’t feel
at all.
If i dig deep enough into the real Dirt
(with my hands, like a kid at the beach–
wet unknowable ancient particles
under my fingernails)
I imagine I’ll reach
a pool of purple
ink
Because in the Dirt, even
poisoned plants
bloom