Charlotte O’Brien: Aperture

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Aperture

Days when

sun burnished your face / your eyes / closing

a mask

tilting / your head to              

summer / ancient / desire / crowning

your golden honey-skin

arms, ripe                               

in that wild / unfurled            

stage

of becoming

not / imagining this feral

body or its       pivot.

Time then to

think / what you wanted beckoning              

fool’s gold, fool’s errand                               

you roamed

and drifted / slinking through

lifetimes, your body / carless / a vessel        

now turned

on its inverse

trajectory.        These days / you swim upstream

slam your body against rock

in this last surge

sensitive to magnetic fields / clearing / a path

a wound / as much / as a shield                                 

the water / murmuring / is it enough?

                                                These days,

the water’s cold

you’re a woman with scales / traversing / submerged terrain           

it’s late and you’ve begun

to / pale / shallow                    when the day pools

its shadows

you’re sweeping                                  

scum from the water’s            edge / vanishing                                 

light / tarring  

                                                your throat

you long                                   

to strike                                   a match          

against night’s dark field.       you’re

sinking beneath / this

deep shivering                        body

of glass / proscenium of sky / surface

of stars                                   

 if you could                            excavate the black

from this / hollow

you would.

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Charlotte O’Brien is a queer writer living in Portland, Oregon who graduated from Pacific University's MFA program in 2013 with a concentration in poetry and nonfiction. Charlotte has essays and interviews most recently published in The Rumpus, Mutha Magazine, and The Manifest-Station. Charlotte’spoems, most recently appeared Reed Magazine, Sheena Na Gig, Epiphany and Catamaran. 'Bones of Flight' was a semifinalist for the Catamaran Poetry Prize. www.charlotteobrien.org