Mothra: The Song Remains
the beads of time pass slow,
tired eyes on the sunrise,
waiting for the eastern glow.
—“The Battle of Evermore”, Led Zeppelin
1.
As drawn to California Sunlight, so I am drawn to you
You know your arms are not scales—even if you say so.
They shimmer—galactic, cosmic—and I have wanted nothing never
more than moments where your movements were a wavebreak
erupting to mine, seismic and somehow—completely quiet, every moment
you are here, earth is lost to me. We are un-shaping our chaos and I am rapturous
constellating to you, stars together, who cares what maw beneath, what stones break
waves. How can it be that when you roar, a kaleidoscope, so, the world is spinning faster.
2.
Sweet Calcutta Rain loads my wings
and you descend forever
what I remember most is precious
is that once we were not
starcrossed and
once is maybe
enough
to know that
you were really
here once
when you said
I’m here now–
my love for you
is ancient.
*
what I remember most is radiance
is that once we were not
tremors noxious and
thrice is maybe is maybe
enough to know that I ache
for knowing that
your hands were once here
You were really here, not once–
thrice—and thrice is maybe enough
when you said
I’ll leave you–
my love for you
Is petrifying.
*
3.
Honolulu Starbright falls and from the rift you are ignited
When you emerge it brings a chaos and I know before the mountains.
You do not know, but the earth breaks open and you do not know
but you are a beacon, and I dishevel a palace of soil to unbury myself
to return as you make maelstroms. We whisper tales of gore, of
how we calmed the tides. You do not know this world, but you know me
and I am softer than your bed deep in the ocean. I am brighter than the
flames that woke you. I am sweeter than a bloodbath. I am safer than the
moon underwater. My love, I know how to read your tremblings and my
love, I will draw you into my song and I will hold you still until forever is
over. Until the world forgets us. Until we are cocooned and fathomless, no
more scales and cilia, only a hum in the atmosphere, in the ether, and we are
so radiant that you cannot be afraid of this. The world is quiet, the ocean is calm,
and I am wilted with my hope that here in my wings you will rebuild all your ruins.
Your Blood Is What Builds You
When I tell my mother I want to know about blood she tells me that everyone takes
connective tissue for granted; without connective tissues we would all be some unfilled, constellational shape clutching an ocean of organs, and my blood is my mother’s blood,
some new structure of star frame. She pulls her hands from the dishwater to check the pot
on the stove. Stirring careful circles, she says without blood we have no blood vessels. Your
blood is what builds you, she says. You are made of many roads and waterfalls. We are not
afraid of our wounds. Your wounds are your healing, each one folding its own deep ocean;
you can’t know the depth of these.
The oldest chasms are in Ethiopia. Deep and whole, lakes of breath from when the world
poured out of the roaring sea with fire in her throat. A tumbling field of igneous sangre. Our
planet has many open wounds, but has learned—as we have—to bury them, to cover them
with other beauties—tendrils of planet, tree-root, rock cavern wind, animal breath—eden
speaks. Artery in ancient Greek is raise: to give form.
In Erta Ale, the land that crawled from the core made shape, millennia of coating a fire-
stone skin over the Danakil. Inside, the fire roils, broils, breathes. The desert is bone-filled
and artillery-locked. It is an artery to the beginning, but we have stopped listening. Tremor becomes wind, destruction, hurricane spilt, spent breath, Earth crawling beneath
wavelength.
The night before my uncle’s open heart surgery he whispers that he has filled his car with
gas and packed an extra bag. His blood is not moving any longer the way we wish to
live—he craves a road in darkness, gasoline, stars rampant over freeways. He is afraid for
his heart to feel the world outside of him, but he has filled his veins with prayer and
nitroglycerin for weeks. These tablets the same as, but smaller than the ones he has used to
open mountains.
Do you know what it feels like to fly? he says, looking East over the Sandia mountains where
his plane, the one he built in his garage, is hangared. It’s like nothing else, he says: To look
down and know that the wind is a passageway. To see the world and beneath—to be
beyond shape and
scars and a heart still beating, a temple breathing. Your blood is what builds you and
you can’t know the depth of this.
Originally from Albuquerque, NM, Kristian Macaron received her MFA from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, and thus melded her love for the colorful Southwest with the stunning New England coast. Her first poetry chapbook, Storm (Swimming with Elephants Publications), was released in July 2015. Her fiction and poetry have been published in The Winter Tangerine Review, Philadelphia Stories, Ginosko Literary Journal, and forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine. She has featured at Chatter Albuquerque, and the podcasts “Vessels and Voids” and “Pen & Poet”. Kristian is a co-founding editor at the literary journal Manzano Mountain Review. She is part-time faculty at the University of New Mexico-Valencia branch campus and the University of the People. Kristianmacaron.com
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