Separation, Parts
by Dani Janae
for Sarah
I’LL NAME MY DAUGHTER ZARA—
an ode to you as force going
vastly in every direction.
I speak to become a child
in the early stages
of recognizing her own voice:
teach me how to braid my hair.
Teach me how a name hangs on
like a gummy tooth. Descent.
All these years of my life.
I want you to hold me
so that I don’t burst
— a collapsing star.
descent cloaking itself
in the same dark
as departure.
I don’t want to grow old
never knowing how you
called me. Teach me how
a name fissures
and fractures
like a gummy tooth.
My primitive devotion turns
tongue into bedrock, and I try
to conjure you from the well
of my chest. I discovered
my own hands too late to never
let you go; both of us now lying
in the absence between
longing and belonging.
You were an isle, then you weren’t.
Oh, to be yours
for one second.
The ecosystem
of the mouth tells everything.
I ask the hollow ground about being born
and she tells me it’s too great, too heavy.
Source: Slush Pile Magazine, Issue 23.
Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.