Cisterna
Rent from DeepDyve- Cisterna
Cisterna
Well Sister there will be water.
What are those well wishers waiting to be? Tell them you are already sister to the meadow’s meadowness, the song’s songing. Will you ask them where they’re headed, then say you’re already there.
There will be water there. There will be water. There will be well enough alone enough for all and thirsters everywhere will drink and drink and be
well. Believe me when I tell you there are miracles and there are miracles. We saw you, Sister Extravagance, walk on water. Whatever weighed heavy only buoyed you then. You knew about well being when you hardly felt the will
to be. You are the living will of every dragonfly, you worship the bee and his honey-ache. You’ve known it well. [End Page 145] The honeysuckle that drew him there is called Kissing-by-the-Gate. This body of yours is mostly water. This body, Sister,
is called a field. This field, Sister, has known floods and fires and maintains will over the succulents and drinks up on holy water every drop. Who blesses the kneeling bee, his church of being? Our offering of pennies rolled down a hill. The wishing well, the tithing, copper cargo paves the cellar of throat where there gleams this knowing: We will be sisters and resistors, transistor radios singing from the well, all this radiating. The flower is a given. The water is given. We are given. We are given over. [End Page 146]
Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Her poetry collection, Intaglio, is available from Kent State University Press. She and Caleb Adler have a chapbook, Emuseum, forthcoming from Dancing Girl P. “Bird Fever” is from that collection.
