Winner of the 2013 Newfound Poetry Prize!
 

GEFION

Laressa Dickey

 

              “Everyone knows the statues are haunted… Don’t you believe that here on our
              island these Gods never died; they just became spirits.”
              –Lilika Nakos

The  history  of  land  surfaces  as  the   history  of   statuary — what   is  the  sea  here
begets  navy  and  must  have  a  marching  band.   A  bird  eventually  a  fast  weapon.
In  order  to  mark   the   body,   remember  how  we  raised  a  country.   The  lake  an
inversion  of  mountain   and   hides  something  different.   A   woman   here   turned
her  sons  into  oxen  to  stake  claim  to  her  own  place—
              Black  pram  with  cardboard  arched  inside   the   shade,  a   baby  +  pictures
of   sky,  a   red  house,   finch   shaped   from  lay  lines  of   the   hill   behind  us.   The
history  of  land  had  been  cartographic:  I  had  rather  see  the  replica  of  the  body
than see the body itself.

 
 

Laressa Dickey is the author of four chapbooks (MIEL Books), including “A Piece of Information About His Invisibility.” Her work has appeared in such journals as Cerise Press, inter|rupture, and Quarterly West. A chapbook “[apparatus for manufacturing sunset]” is forthcoming (dancing girl press) and a poetry collection entitled “Bottomland” is forthcoming in 2014 (Shearsman).