the years were shot through
with flying and tangled
cords of light
which I parted and
stepping out
into the dark
deserted grove
I watched my mother
as she'd
watched hers
who'd watched
hers and this
is a long maternal line
of rifts
with fathers
husbands
lovers
the body wants
to open and spill its history
its history's
all shuttered up
in skin
my Irish blood's
patterned tides
beneath pale skin
and pale eyes my casual pallor
the body wants
to step outside
of the body so I step into you
evening air
or presence of
an almost intimacy
did I tell you how when my father died
a voice awoke
inside my blood
it was an anxious sound
a Yiddish song
of agitated birds departing
from mythical red trees
O wild prayer
of coalescing waters
have I been wrong
in every moment
does the body want
to fasten shut
and hide its ruptures
its raptures
its nearness to the gate
Cassie Donish's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Best New Poets 2015, Quarterly West, Sixth Finch, Forklift OH, and elsewhere. A managing and poetry editor for the literary magazine The Spectacle, she is an MFA candidate and Olin Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis. She co-edited February, an anthology.