Two Poems by Loisa Fenichell

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Many wishes

Daily I walk my loneliness 
towards the edges of the shore. Some shades of sky

remain this way: abandoned
as the plush chair
on the side of a metropolis’ unpaved road. My sorrow’s shape
is the faint crack in the field: this kind of haunting 

that rests below the barn’s window, the hooves of calves. In the outdoor field, a widow’s
dress looks best coated in ash. I too

want to notice
more colors: my grandmother’s saltshakers; the sweater of the woman
who once walked her goats
through my hometown.

Pastoral; echo; stifle. Words come to my chest
quickly as disembodied faces. I want to sing the chimes of the blue jays. 

I want my butcher

living in the mouth. My own self
livid as the time you left my bedside. Once, I told you, loneliness
is fatigue’s displacement. I told you, all the oceans of this earth
are dying. Which felt true

enough to wake me into scraps of horror
and bits of ice cream all over
my long white dress. This will not 

be my wedding day. On my wedding day,
I will have slices
of praise for the whole of my body. I will have you

singing my name in a voice
that might one day surrender to fits, to thoughts,
to desires that come to me naturally. 

*

Act I, Scene V

Today I draft myself to market. My feet have already been harvested. On the way I sing my thoughts to the redwoods, those empires of energetic branches. I want to see spring, ricocheting against my naked arms, without you in my heart. There are nights when I remember your small car, silver as the teeth of fish, better than I do your face. Let’s call this progress. (I go into the city and search for your bumper sticker, advocating for organic farming. I cannot find it. Let’s call this progress.) I was born in the month of May, of blood and of bone structure. You were born in August, of promises and of potential. Days when I kneeled next to your small, silver car, alongside red strips of highway. Days when I questioned into myself like a cactus and wept for when I would not know you. Now I do not know you. I step into the sun, bright as clean produce, and am miserable, a child whose dreams have been lost to the night. I mean to say I would like to say without you I am this child, but to the public eye, to friends, I feel I must be stronger than this. Strong when even the swallows migrate away from my ripped dress. I adore the ones who have yet to experience any kind of loss. I realize now I never asked you for your favorite color but I know you love the sight of the ocean. I am wearing underpants the color of a worn-out tide, but you will never see what most hurts inside of me.