I Am Red as a Heart, She Said, But My Soul Is Inedible by Maureen Seaton

I

…It was not her first try. Last time black eye with
…meth, purple stain down her cheek.  July.  Now
…I speed through the Carolinas on cruise control
…to Delerium.  November.  Near Rocky Mount
…or Coosawhatchie.  You are the smartest girl I
…know, I told her.  Everything you say, I said, is
…smart.  Stay alive, I said.  Four months flew by
…like  white-flecked  fields,  like  driving  alive
…across a state line.

II

At its largest, the universe contrasts nicely with being in a coma.

I am greatly concerned with the ethical treatment of light(houses).

If the book is a machine, as some insist, is it, therefore, conscious?

III

…And once,  I came to the end of a litany I had
…yet to create.  Each prayer branched as if born
…of equation, each song stoked new archives and
…heroines.  I  thought:  caprice,  crosswind,  a
…season   of   coupling,    and   arrived   at   my
…destination awash in salt or silt or silver. The
…river I rode fed the tree a ransom light, or the
…river dried at the  tree’s  worn  roots,  but not,
…mercifully, before. And so the singing went on
…for a time. For a time, the tree persisted—as if
…unharmed, it fractaled cloudward.

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Maureen Seaton has authored twenty-one poetry collections, most recently, Sweet World (CavanKerry, 2019). Her awards include the Lambda Literary, NEA, and Pushcart. Her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls (Wisconsin), also garnered a “Lammy.” With Neil de la Flor, she edited Reading Queer: Poetry in a Time of Chaos (Anhinga, 2018).