This Intersection of Light
Monica Koenig
I.
After a long time away,
I walk out of the river.
In metaphor, I would wear a pale blue dress—
lifting the hem imprudently to collect sagebrush, heaping.
Instead it is winter, with no metaphor.
I hold the coyote’s head beneath the water;
the effort warms my body.
Beneath the blue summer dress,
I try to articulate this intersection of light.
III.
As I walked further into the wash
the walls of the wash rose.
I do not believe in a suffered day
but the wash rose so high
I felt the day ill.
The bodies don’t rot, always.
I smoke tobacco twice
a day and I allow this.
I am unfamiliar with the closeness
of a flood. I’ve forced you through
these gulches as a gesture of restraint
and watched my own reaction
to the low moon.
If this dry valley had hands
it would dress me. I would sew
a fine blue dress, wear your winter
skins, say ‘I am hell herself’.
IV.
When I am at the sink
tying my hair back,
I call myself wife.
As a body of water,
a kill is a riverbed.
He responds to the lapping
of my cotton dress
like I am contained in a blue
inarticulate sky.
It is not a myth that the coyote
only eats the harmless—
he pardons them.
Another dark water
would suit a more
planetary wife.
It’s not about the romance
of a deluged riverbed,
an eager kill.
V.
If you’ve ever repeated your own name aloud,
decided it didn’t belong to you
that is what having a ghost
in your house is like.
I told myself it was the wind that blew
the lights on in our house while we slept.
I’d like to think the devil has lanterns for bones,
swinging loudly through the juniper forests—
imagine how brightly she would find you.
I don’t itemize the ghosts anymore. They are a stressed hive.
VI.
Since you came to the desert,
you’ve only counted four birds.
What sin is it to raise the dead;
I’ve done this several times—
Urge east, following a straight line,
wash the body tenderly in salt,
twice a day, they’ll come back.
Some men cannot bring their sickness
across the threshold;
they must be invited in.
I’ve done this several times. I’ve injected
the birds with milk and eggs. They’ll come back.
I didn’t demand this.
A strange place for a rose bush,
to be wrong, or a woman.
Monica Koenig
Monica Koenig lives and works in Estes Park, Colorado. After completing her MFA in poetry at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2014, she started a career with the National Park Service. Her work has been published in The Paris American and Typo Magazine.