Chelsea Dingman
a brief history of how I found you [hanged]
hemmed—
the heart
in its small sac, you hanged
not for the heart’s sake
but for forsaken rooms your brain
became, sound
torn & rent
from your tongue. you didn’t fall
asleep & not wake, no matter the new
gossip, your hanged
body that speaks of its deficits:
the rivers of veins
too shallow
for your blood not to flood,
your stare
from a closet
in a hotel room, unfamiliar
with blood—; did you hesitate
to make a mess of
your limbs, paling
like orchids?
speak: claim a stake
in this hurt, this heart
-stroke, this heat
that long-drained the rooms
of your body,
each radiant centimeter—
the impossible self
-love you once reached
for with coffee & a bagel
over breakfast, sun
-hurt in a morning
without walls or sky
-lights, nowhere to hang
like a wire hanger, hooked
in the hollows of
a closet,
the body left
to float.
Chelsea Dingman is a Canadian citizen and Visiting Instructor at the University of South Florida. Her first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Her chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved, is forthcoming from Madhouse Press (2018). In 2016-17, she also won The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, The Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, and Water-stone Review’s Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in Ninth Letter, The Colorado Review, Mid American Review, Cincinnati Review, and Gulf Coast, among others. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.
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