Chelsea Dingman
a brief history of how I found you [hanged]
hemmed—
the heart
in its small sac, you hanged
​
not for the heart’s sake
​
but for forsaken rooms your brain
became, sound
​
torn & rent
​
from your tongue. you didn’t fall
asleep & not wake, no matter the new
​
gossip, your hanged
​
body that speaks of its deficits:
the rivers of veins
​
too shallow
​
for your blood not to flood,
your stare
​
from a closet
​
in a hotel room, unfamiliar
with blood—; did you hesitate
​
to make a mess of
​
your limbs, paling
like orchids?
​
speak: claim a stake
​
in this hurt, this heart
-stroke, this heat
​
that long-drained the rooms
​
of your body,
each radiant centimeter—
​
the impossible self
​
-love you once reached
for with coffee & a bagel
​
over breakfast, sun
​
-hurt in a morning
without walls or sky
​
-lights, nowhere to hang
​
like a wire hanger, hooked
in the hollows of
​
a closet,
the body left
to float.
Chelsea Dingman is a Canadian citizen and Visiting Instructor at the University of South Florida. Her first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Her chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved, is forthcoming from Madhouse Press (2018). In 2016-17, she also won The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, The Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, and Water-stone Review’s Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in Ninth Letter, The Colorado Review, Mid American Review, Cincinnati Review, and Gulf Coast, among others. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.
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