Angela Duggins

Quatre poèmes

 

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The Salamander Leads the Revolution – Bending Hell

 

What will come when the hellbender stops her rocking,

when the silent keening

draws no air,

when stagnation implodes her gills?

What dams will fall?

What rocks will turn?

What cities will topple?

We saw her perched,

still and unbothered,

and that shook us,

to see a creature

so unfearing of our might

that we supposed she was not of this world.

She’s not of this world.

She is this world!

Holding under the flat rocks,

waiting for us to bed,

to slip out and catch

the crawdads we ignored.

It took a wall to choke her!

It took a massive wall,

And, when we struck,

it was by accident

because never by intention

could we have ended a reign so great

as the snot otters’

claim to the space

between limestone

and ore.

We slept not knowing our triumph

or that she, our world,

was regrouping for the strike,

still and unbothered.

 

Ophelia’s Love Whispered Their Calling

 

I refuse to believe

that ophelia slipped beneath the depths

of her own accord,

that, when her body screamed

for fear of the needles shooting through her lungs,

that, when the weight of her station pressed through her chest,

she would have been strong enough to fight the primal urge.

I refuse to believe

that a body tossed out of habit

would not on its own float.

That, in a world inhabited by ghosts

there was no mechanism

that could pique the curiosity

of a young woman

and entreat her

to swim to her death.

I do believe

that none who told her story

would know the love

of a tender creature

hid beneath torrents

shimmering

and pure.

 

Another Stack on Asa’s Desk, and I Just Took a Job up North

 

I am not a refugee.

Refugees are children 

with skin clinging to their bones,

mothers whose nails 

separated from their fingers

as they fought to cling 

to the edge of a life boat,

friends who exchanged 

final glances with a smile.

Refugees are brave people.

People who fought

as long as they could

to find light in the darkest worlds.

People who followed that light over mountains

and oceans

and rivers

and walls.

Into the unknown.

There is no name for what I am.

I drove here.

Over a bridge in a four-door sedan.

When I stepped out,

I recited no laws,

performed no rituals.

I took my keys,

and paid my rent

and started a new life.

So, why am I scared?

Why do I shake at night

when I think of all that I did

and could have done,

how I let my tongue be tied into a star 

on a christmas tree in the square

and closed my ears to the venom in the song

sung by those below the branches,

tied to roots gnarled

around the pebble

that dares to crack a fissure

and name it Martin Luther King Boulevard?

Stronger people stayed.

People who knew they

could fight from the shadows,

teach history and music and life

uncensored,

lie on a stack of house bills,

say that they only teach life skills

while hiding a list of secret

pronouns behind their backs.

They know they can never relax.

Still they stay.

I am not as brave,

and I am not a refugee.

Because refugees flee the monsters

who hide in their schools

and their town halls

and their homes.

They flee someone else.

The howling comes from the outside,

shakes their bones

grinds their teeth.

My howling grinds teeth too

as it squeezes past clenched jaws

on its way to frolic down the alley

in pink gingham.

Nipping at heels.

Driving people from their homes 

with its violent complacency.

There are thousand like me.

They fled Germany, Rwanda, El Salvador

a year or two or five

before they could be asked to do the unthinkable.

So they could never truly say what they would do.

I am not a refugee.

 

On the Midge’s Wing

 

While we look to the horizon,

death waits on the wing of a midge.

The boars trample nightshade and hemlock,

and there are those who would testify

to seeing death perched on their backs

or else swear her running with the river swells.

So, we erect our fences and levees

while the midge kisses our noses,

and death writes her runes on our brows.

 

Angela Duggins is an Ozarkian writer and theatre artist currently thriving in Illinois. Her work has appeared in print at Rupkatha, Sirens Call Magazine, and Rune Bear Weekly and has appeared onstage at Searcy Summer Dinner Theatre, Ozark Actors Theatre, Big Muddy New Play Festival, and Barter Theatre. She has a deep love of cheesecake. Bienvenue au Danse, Angela.

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