Dion O’Reilly
Mariana
You have to remember this isn’t your land
it belonged to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours.
—Philip Levine
Why do I drift on memories?
Conjure what I lost, repeat
the loss again and again?
Is it because of a happiness
that rises in me like heat
or fog touched by sun?
It weakens me, invades my skin—
the hope I can hold on
to anything, even my bones.
I heard there was a time when
poets returned to marble tombs
with shovels and axes
to exhume their beloveds—
Emerson’s young bride, two years gone,
held again in his arms.
How many times have I returned
to a mother who savaged me?
Searched for her again and again
in the bodies of men—their eyes,
burnished like hers as she beat me.
Blood prick of a needle, then bliss
while I recut memory’s diamond.
Have you heard of light organs
in creatures who live at such depth,
sunlight refuses to enter?
Luminous glands embed in their skin.
Only in silent darkness, only in the sea,
only in the sting of salt.
Dion O’Reilly is the author of Ghost Dogs (Terrapin Books, 2020). Her work has appeared in Narrative, New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Sugar House Review, Rattle, The Sun, Tupelo Quarterly, and other journals and anthologies. O’Reilly has spent much of her life on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains, working at various times as a theater manager, graphic designer, and public school teacher, among other occupations.
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