19 January 2009 | Vol. 8, No. 4

What I Hold

by JESSICA PIAZZA

A glint—an intimation of what gleams.

Just the incidentals; nothing grand

in pomegranates, Coney Island, reams of

of new newspapers hitting dawn—dark stands.

The birds I hear don't sound like opera, not

like flutes or piccolos at play. They sound

like birds. Sometimes the birds are all I've got.

There's nothing grand but wakefulness, the ground

I jump from; nothing but the shining air

which might be a light left on for me. A glow

that may be small, but bright and worthy of care.

I pity the fragile, but I still forgo

the sturdy cup and choose the demitasse.

Whatever's in my grip, it's made of glass.

—

Whatever's in my grip, it's made of glass—

blown promises, assurance that forged skin

will harden, change to something that might pass

for beautiful. But though I know that in—

side every crafted sphere there is just air,

I cannot love the space between the words,

can find no pleasure in the silence there.

And if the point is trusting what's unheard—

how every stop, in time, will yield a sound—

the shape I seek is not one I create.

Thorns twist around themselves to form a crown;

they frame an emptiness we'll consecrate.

Without the skips, the beat would not exist.

My hand grasps nothing and still forms a fist.

—

My hand grasps nothing and still forms a fist

for me to rest my heart against. There's doubt

in everything but what I own: the trysts

I thought were trusts are minor—they amount

to nothing but a blink over the lifetime of the eye.

When subject fails to add up, there's the sum

of my own fingers, vanities, the way

the body shows me just what's mine: the run

of timid freckles sprinting down an arm,

a clavicle to climb, the bones that hold

my weight despite themselves, despite the harm

I've caused. And every story I've been told

is hidden in my spine, a refugee.

Worry my backbone like a rosary.

—

Worry. My backbone, like a rosary,

cannot withstand the press of all this faith.

I've wrapped myself around the things I see

so tightly that my stories feel like breath—

beholden to them, I inhale their rich

minutiae desperately, but when I let

them out they have been changed. This is a switch

that stripes my best attempts. I need to get

perspective now, and so, unusual

as it may seem, I'll stop to look outside

these lines; to ask if it is sin to pull

myself away from this, or prayer to ride

the story out. But who will answer me?

I'm not a girl who has epiphanies.

—

I'm not a girl who has epiphanies,

but once one happened, waiting for a light

to change. An ancient woman raised a weak

gnarled fist to tap my window just as night

pressed on. I lowered it. She spoke—a voice

as thick and cumbersome as wool. My feet,

she said, I can't get home. I had a choice,

but I said no. And she went down the street,

the queue of cars…they all said no, and no

and no. I knew this damage was my own;

I had been taught such fears. I knew. And so?

Perhaps I changed my mind and drove her home.

And maybe to this day that choice still seems

like a hint, a minute's inkling of what gleams.