Nadira Clare Wallace: extracts from Hope Fight

from Surrender Harder

I like a long tongue that can re-enter the past
and get to licking there with phrases, get
to massaging there my injured ago’s.

*

When I look up I feel I am home-come.
Why, what have those shreds
of dream-fleece––clouds––
got to do with me?
Maybe I’m more than capsizing body.
Maybe there is something sky-
allied that would
like to levitate the frame.

*

Looking at a daffodil’s saw-toothed silk,
my head feels held
that used to be lust-concussed.
What winter monotonized
is greening up and out.
Some repairer present I reckon.
Some repairer who is stashing in each cell––
doesn’t matter how cold or craven––
evermore sunbreaks.

from Break

You said we would not work.
Perfectly mistaken,
there I sat with palms pressed against eyes so I did not have to see
your closeness cordoned off––
lilting denim collar,
mouth a sort of horizonal mauve––
before pain leapt flare-like from its word
to clean me out further.

from Summer Tracks

There is no need to be better.
There is just
light beading the wands of the willow––
and solicitations
to get loaded
with joy as it rushes back to you without finding any fault,
as if from each far needle point
of the compass, home.

*

My incredible smallness
and sand-like, collapsing legs––
these facts don’t matter one mote.

Who gave you the right to declaim that?

I have grip of some force, friend,
which stretches exuberantly relaxed
beyond and beyond
our scrutinized cosmos.