Agatha Remembers Her Childhood
Alexis Orgera
One feels it in one’s feet, the tao
of root-delay, a dead catfish stripped & sun-
dried makes a crucifix
of its spine—every looking
is its own answer, which sounds
(biblically) like wailing. In a room
the size of a dam’s chest the sand-
dollar incubates its doves,
cracked open its heart grieves
a savior of white birds. I keep going
back to my childhood where something
like a monster lives in me, hidden
so expertly I can’t make out
its face except as four walls,
an architecture of windowlessness.
Migraine when it came was the physical
wafer of my scalawag, migraine & night-
mare & basement titan,
rapscallion, scapegrace. One might be
enamored of the names
that call upon the thing. One might
wander rib-woven the banks
of so many underworlds. One might find
in the horror-mirror a lover,
a plover, a skittering hellion, mouth-
golem, might & mightily
instigate leviathan to pounce, colossus
to hunker down. One might but then
one might not—as if revealed
in a vision I might see
in my fetal barbarian an element
of craft, a signature of wildlife.
Agatha Develops a Taste for Disaster
I’ve been photographing the geckos
who live under my porch—
one response to creature
flurry being the need to capture—
like speckled fetuses, bellies distended,
almost translucent, they leap
to devour quarter-sized June bugs.
I like to watch the lizards gorge.
Easier to branch the divide, to dictate
an assemblage of bug upon bug
than to be chased by two nine-foot gators
across an expanse of green, a thing
I’ve done too, a moment I’ve run through
& felt the prey inside me, a tiny man
jostling my ribcage. I stand by my hypothesis:
a well-carved stone signifies the root
of human delay. Hunters
will say that buckshot doesn’t always
lead to dinner; they’ll stop
in their tracks to examine a mutant
grape leaf & miss the wild boar
as it runs away. Here lighter, here flame.
Once, a gecko smiled at me,
parting its red lips for my flash
& I caught a set of umbrella-black
wings, still wriggling, still flying away.
Agatha Unbound
While the star is long dead, its remains are still bursting with action.
—NASA
In Old Iranian, paradise is a word
for walled. I cut my dice
& grieve you, green
potted thing, ciphered
expanse. You’d been stuck
in a rotary
of naming, the power it gave you
to say giraffe & tiger—those
forms that remain
unknowable, the softness
of tongues, holy
spirit debacle. How many
wantings are we allowed
in this life, this one here,
our ions of sand? When a star dies
it is not expulsion
but propulsion
that guides it into the eternal cycle
of historical remnants.
The night-snake hissed, don’t be afraid.
God the wanderer
under Cassiopeia’s sizzle,
morning thunder
unabashed. Lest & lest
the only words he knew
to speak to you, a threat guarding
the gates of his invention—
lest they become like us.
Dragon fruit & tangerine
would have been cleaner
triumphs, would have hoisted
you into true knowing; you’d have
written mythos, eros, thanatos on the gates,
but before land & air,
water & semen, sea-foam,
a form on the sea, Gaia forming
waves: mother of all goddesses &
gods, up from the sea, up savage
beast, up come, vomit up,
crater on earth’s calendar,
come up, where the forms
wave-ride to safety, air glistens or listens, let go.
Alexis Orgera is the author of two books of poems, How Like Foreign Objects and Dust Jacket. Her Agatha poems are part of a book-length series of poems in the imagined voice of Agatha of Sicily, or Saint Agatha. Other poems in this series can be found in Carolina Quarterly, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Memorious, and Prairie Schooner. She is the associate editor of Savannah magazine and co-founder and publisher of Penny Candy Books, and indie children’s book press.