HERE I AM AGAIN TRYING TO BE DISTANCE
& not the thing to occupy it or the vehicle
to move from one side of it to another no here
I am again trying to be distance that long road
the light travels to shine utopia’s rustic orange
upon the city’s brick that faint mist you glimpse
atop the sea that cloud the plane climbs into
& the air to hold it up & whatever gravity
stills it where it is I want so bad to be
all there is in 5th grade someone said
they’d teleport if they could & I nodded
afraid of how long they said a life would take
I only wanted to be there & not here
& now I am here & no longer know where
there is you see a humpback whale might swim
400,000 miles in its life which is enough
to bridge the world 50 times & I know
you might be a frequent flyer but have you
ever flown slow enough that it feels
like the plane’s contrails left simmering
in the sky are your arms holding the whole
wide weight of the world in a warm & kind
embrace I guess that’s what I mean
when I talk about wanting to be distance
how when I walk long enough I feel
in my ache a journey how each memory
pulled one by one from my mind tallies
a litany of miles how I have learned in my
running to still my breath to a hush soft
enough to barely bother a flower I hold it all
the way my father held me when he held me
for the first time the way when I accepted
each year as a loss & all of life as a counting-down
I learned we might never finish what we start
& what better way is there than this to love
IF IT’S NOT TENDERNESS I WANT
then what is it If not love then who am I On the bus two girls trade new adages holding them like they are older & clutching even older diamonds Trust no one but yourself & maybe two other people one says Outside the Delaware River curls its lonely passage between the hills I am lonely but loved but forever lonely still Isn’t this how it goes I drank from many creek beds & gave such water many names thinking what sustained me would be called the wide vast number of things Who is to say we are meant to be understood It took a time before god for this river to carve its hollow into rock & it lived for a still long time before someone came to call it something & another came to tar a road along its slope What I mean is here & time & love
& I will call tomorrow
with yesterday’s news so we both know the world we’re warring in It’s big & at least half in shadow & most everyone will never know our love That’s okay I swallowed the dust flecked off a bird’s wings & I feel like I can at least try to fly without making a fool of myself This must speak toward tenderness When you laughed as I pulled the towel up to my neck & paraded around your apartment like a dinosaur We transcend is what I mean This river will cut through us forever The girls will grow up & become our teachers At least one person will tell our story as a warning of what to do or not Simplify the bird in my mouth says There’s so much involved in flying it’s best not to think at all Or do Or fall
—
Devin Kelly is is the author of the books Blood on Blood (Unknown Press), and In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen (CCM), and the winner of a Best of the Net Prize. He is the Interviews Editor for Full Stop and co-hosts the Dead Rabbits Reading Series in New York City. He works as an afterschool director in Queens, teaches at the City College of New York, and lives in Harlem.
Artwork by: Timothy Gerken
Timothy Gerken is an associate professor of Humanities at a small state school in Central New York. As a teacher, writer, and photographer Timothy’s work calls attention to the presiding metaphors we follow—often blindly—and to the structural conventions they encourage.
Links
Website: timgerkenphotography.com
Instagram: @timothy.gerken/