Alchemy
/Lisa Compo
Light bounces
tufted sky, rooftops
tangle with wire. It was
a strange ferry
ride there. My best
friend’s mom dying
again. The screen
in my pocket shares
tulips dusting a window-
sill. Yellow petals
softening the fluorescence.
In the simmer
and mirage a wave
makes a whale. A spell
is like this: to live through
language. Grammar
and grimoire,
the same root— I place the word soon
by a bundle of collected stems, press
prefixes like mon-, then wild onions, canary-
grass onto paper. Dusk glamours
so I keep arthropod husks
and hollow reeds, conjure
losing as a whisp
of soft brush. Rain is different here,
a mist trilling my face, static. In August,
desert breaks open
gypsum, curves a new land
-scape. Here— here, heavy heads
foreign my palms
hovering hydrangeas
plumed from heat.
I forage for all things
stony and mushy: a claw,
kelp. I remember
and it is almost
funny to me now, what we choose
to remember. Her mom in the car,
NPR on. The transition
music rumbles in a shopkeeper’s
tiny radio, this must be
what they mean when
they say everyone
gone will stay
right where you’ve left
them. Sifting mineral,
I search for red frost
-ed glass. Sun-soaked
and kissed by ruptured
streetlights— prayer
is like this: to live
on nothing.
I keep the hoard close,
make an inventory of all things
once alive and all things eroded,
softened, and half-eaten. An old wreck
divides the bluing
horizon. One side
holding Venus and the moon,
the other a threadbare
cloud. Hotel vents whistle,
windows bolted, balcony
facing the expanse
that is night melded
with sea— a silhouette
spans its wings
when I wake, a drift
of sunlight shuttering:
a gull’s swift
shadow a weight
-ed blanket pressed
with morning. My body
salted, shelled open.
Author’s Note: For this poem, I was interested in how the landscape could transcend the complicated experience of second-hand grief. The shorter lines allowed me the space to create a slow and ritualistic pacing which fits the themes of alchemy and conjuring of memory.
Lisa Compo is an MFA candidate at UNC - Greensboro. She has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as: The Journal, Rhino, Puerto del Sol, Sugar House Review, Cimmaron Review, and elsewhere. You can check out her recent interview with Alexandra Teague at storySouth, issue 52.
