Self-Portrait as the Changeling
By Halee Kirkwood
after René Auberjonois
Wet, where all I had longed for
was the determined touch of softness. Wet,
I watched the solids come and go.
I counted feet, that ache
and echo of planets, became
the prosecutor and defense
of my own heart, that red-tailed escape
from the struggle to represent
the shapes required of love.
A rose bud, briefcase
or snarling mutt, pea soup,
blood blister—I knew hate most
not as these but in my
formlessness, poured into a coffee cup
my keeper mimicked to sip.
I could not honey my clay.
The shape of our star days,
a hum in the rookery of birds
I'd know, and never be.
And when I found my people—
when my people meddled
with me—they opened a hole
to home in the punch-clock
of deep space I was destined
to fall through.
--------
Kirkwood told Poets.org about being drawn to Odo from Deep Space Nine because he "can mimic the shape of just about anything, yet struggles to become an entity unto himself" and "when he finally finds the homeworld he longs for, he must reckon with his people’s tyranny and hostility towards those he loves," an experience familiar "concerning queerness and mixed-raceness, of a hometown that doesn't love you back and which you can't resist returning to."
Friday was warmer than the past few days and really smelled like fall, probably because the neighborhood service people were vacuuming up the leaves on the street. I goofed off most of the morning reading SPN finale reactions online, which is pretty silly considering how little I've seen of the show (though today at Jessica's suggestion I did watch the Groundhog Day episode "Mystery Spot" which is pretty great). We took a walk to enjoy the weather, I caught a shiny Sandshrew, and we had poutine and veggie sausage for dinner, which was great.
Evening TV started with The Mandalorian, which finally has some momentum, then The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, which starts slow and juvenile but then turns into one of the most fun things I have ever seen; it's like Robot Chicken wrote a Star Wars script with Red Letter Media and the execs at Disney and Warner Animation agreed to film it! I don't want to spoil anything but one cameo is funnier than the next! Afterwards, we put on The Princess Switch: Switched Again, which I found only bearable when Evil Vanessa Hudgens was onscreen! South Mountain cows:
No comments:
Post a Comment