Julia Norton
Don’t Bring This One to Adam
Every night, the moon
I am not meant to call upon. Scooping
out the seeds, flinging them into the dark,
calling them stars. If I sunk
my teeth into the universe,
would the divine drip
down my chin? Should I
denominate the dewdrops one by one?
Every morning, unearthing
the safety coffins.
The words stretching, undulating
into the syllables I drag up my throat
and over my tongue.
I’m a lousy cobbler, gilding Everything
with a name before I walk through it.
In my tower, throwing bones to the floor to assemble.
Assemble.
As-sem-ble.
Looking for skeletons I recognize.
“Talpa europaea.
Mus minutoides.
Draconem.”
At Reynisfjara, squeezing black beads of sand
in my fist. Basalt columns stacked high on the beach.
Strange rocks jutting from the water. Strange-
that I should call them strange.
The ant wending through the imperfections
of the house. Paper peeling from the wall,
away from yellowing glue.
Somewhere, sweat trickling
down the curve of your back.
The commas, your silhouette
coiled into sleep.
Blank spaces for the gasp.
Shoving (shov-ing) my
ego into the empty.
Romance and panic are
different edges of the same
bright blade. I can’t slip one
between my ribs without being
pierced by the other.
No, I should not subjugate
my feeling to the rattling soliloquy.
Damn finding the lover in the landscape.
Damn finding the landscape in the lover.
How should I live? Dancing with my unrest?
Barefoot and naming the pebbles embedded hot in my heels?
Cloister me in the mouth-to-mouth.
I swear the grass
still whispers. Let it be.
Julia Norton is from North Carolina by way of Rockville, Maryland. She is a poet, blogger, and podcaster. Her poetry has also appeared in Rust + Moth and Haikuniverse. You can find her discussing the writing life at Voyage and Verse on iTunes, and talking up her adopted hometown at thetriangleguide.com.
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