Stephanie Goehring

HUM AND MOAN

 

The wasp nest's amputation from the window's collarbone,

or the wasp nest's inability to stop growing there:

What matters is the coil, the weaving, the sunlight's cleaving

before the paper tomb once home to the wasps' hum and moan.

 

I can't name a single person I've been

both in love and honest with.

 

The moon is a wasp nest. The moon is a cobblestone.

The moon is a tumor, a communion wafer, a womb:

What matters is the recoil, the filling, the moon's unyielding

pull, its vowels' gravity on my tongue on yours.

Stephanie Goehring

WHAT IF RATHER THAN SKY, GOD CHOSE TO HANG

 

What if rather than sky, god chose to hang

black and white photographs of the split

ends of our hair up there, or millions of empty sconces,

oil paintings of Jesus as a boy crying for a wolf

dressed as a sheep, innumerable fireflies

with pins through their wings? Would they still

say love is all we need? With the way that colony

of branches didn't waver in its invasion, I'd say

the sky is a woman told to roll to her side

by a man intent on nothing but discretion;

it doesn't house your ghosts or angels, love, disease.

The sky is blue, its face turned away from you.