"From the Desire Field" by Natalie Diaz

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 5, 2017   From the Desire Field   Natalie Diaz

I don't call it sleep anymore.              I'll risk losing something new instead—   like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose.   But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing— a wonder, a grief or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined              fruit to unfasten from,   despite my trembling.   Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. Let me call it, a garden.   Maybe this is what Lorca meant              when he said, verde que te quiero verde—   because when the shade of night comes, I am a field of it, of any worry ready to flower in my chest.   My mind in the dark is una bestia, unfocused,              hot. And if not yoked to exhaustion   beneath the hip and plow of my lover, then I am another night wandering the desire field—   bewildered in its low green glow,   belling the meadow between midnight and morning. Insomnia is like Spring that way—surprising              and many petaled,   the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow.   I am struck in the witched hours of want—   I want her green life. Her inside me in a green hour I can't stop.              Green vein in her throat green wing in my mouth   green thorn in my eye. I want her like a river goes, bending. Green moving green, moving.   Fast as that, this is how it happens—              soy una sonámbula.   And even though you said today you felt better, and it is so late in this poem, is it okay to be clear,              to say, I don't feel good,   to ask you to tell me a story about the sweet grass you planted—and tell it again              or again—   until I can smell its sweet smoke,              leave this thrashed field, and be smooth.            Copyright © 2017 Natalie Diaz. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "The desire field is a space bloomed of tension—the body's fire, and its smoke when those fires quiet. (I am told they will quiet.) In these ever-green wind-bent star-strewn blades of worry and field, spinning until lost, I can rename the burdens of my heart—and offer the body back to language, to be carried, to be grinded into love and what is good. What if I call my anxiety desire? What if I rename this terrible thing as wanting and blossoming with touch? Why not let all bodies—my own body included—be the beloved and possible of offering me a smooth place to rest?   ("From the Desire Field" is a poem-letter to my friend Ada Limón. We have written into each other over the past few months. The space between our poems has become a kingdom I wander, along whose streets my griefs and anxieties move in new ways—they are unashamed and unafraid to be seen into. The gift of shamelessness: because I am writing only across our small kingdom, to an amiga/amor/hermana.)" —Natalie Diaz   Natalie Diaz is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). She teaches at Arizona State University.   Photo credit: Roberto Westbrook Poetry by Diaz   When My Brother Was an Aztec  (Copper Canyon Press, 2012)  "Instructions on Not Giving Up" by Ada Limón "You Are a Dark Body" by Natalie Scenters-Zapico "[No strawberry moon]" by Emmy Pérez Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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