"Call Me Yes"
by Sarah Browning
Songs rise easily in me now
there’s nothing to temper me:
down the highway, road songs
there and back, love songs,
song a hurting with past lovers,
an old ache for us both.
But song wants to be glory –
you and I, we deserve its joyous
clamor – everyone does.
The world begs for it. Love,
you sing to me at bedtime,
you sing to me when I wake.
Hurt flies from my closed
throat, the clench loosens,
and we are singing, you and I,
the past past at last. Love,
bring me your astonished
self, your song-full always.
I think of a song for you even
now, sitting on the stoop
of my new home, you still
sleeping in my bed, summer
bounty you brought me warm
on the counter just inside the door:
Oh squash, oh corn. Red, red tomatoes.
**
Light over the church’s peaked roof:
I think of you.
Waking for the first time in five days
without your hands on me
and it’s a headache morning: you.
Telling myself it’s been less than a week:
you. Sitting in a packed poetry reading
in my new city and I’m the only person
making noise, snapping, I think of:
you, calling out at the Blues jam, clapping
hard. We are noisy. We are large.
Headache praise. Hands praise.
We are gratitude, all over
our magnificent, ruined bodies.
**
Sunday morning and the drums begin
at the church across the way. Cool air
pours into my new home. You are
asleep across town. I rose early, have
been up already for hours. My talents
I’ve turned toward love. Unfamiliar
heart, long tucked away, I’ve taken
out of its tissue paper wrapping. I’ve
taken everything – your body as a token
for the future. Even as the traffic
picks up on my cross-town street
and the church drums quiet for now,
finished with practice,
pausing before praise.
**
We’ve turned to the practical –
before the long drive you take
my car to your mechanics who
give it a once over. You buy me screws,
even down to brass tacks for the hook
in the shape of a stag where I want
to hang the extra set of keys. Keys
we seem to have found to each other’s
locked door of ache.
Wanting. Eyes’ desire, eyes’ please.
I am heart-ened now I please you,
now I take you in my teeth and gnaw,
take you hard against my waiting.
I have been waiting. I have been at once
alive to maybe and thick-skinned to no.
No ate at me, threatened the possible sky.
But now, call me yes. Call me a stone,
turning in the polishing tide.
there’s nothing to temper me:
down the highway, road songs
there and back, love songs,
song a hurting with past lovers,
an old ache for us both.
But song wants to be glory –
you and I, we deserve its joyous
clamor – everyone does.
The world begs for it. Love,
you sing to me at bedtime,
you sing to me when I wake.
Hurt flies from my closed
throat, the clench loosens,
and we are singing, you and I,
the past past at last. Love,
bring me your astonished
self, your song-full always.
I think of a song for you even
now, sitting on the stoop
of my new home, you still
sleeping in my bed, summer
bounty you brought me warm
on the counter just inside the door:
Oh squash, oh corn. Red, red tomatoes.
**
Light over the church’s peaked roof:
I think of you.
Waking for the first time in five days
without your hands on me
and it’s a headache morning: you.
Telling myself it’s been less than a week:
you. Sitting in a packed poetry reading
in my new city and I’m the only person
making noise, snapping, I think of:
you, calling out at the Blues jam, clapping
hard. We are noisy. We are large.
Headache praise. Hands praise.
We are gratitude, all over
our magnificent, ruined bodies.
**
Sunday morning and the drums begin
at the church across the way. Cool air
pours into my new home. You are
asleep across town. I rose early, have
been up already for hours. My talents
I’ve turned toward love. Unfamiliar
heart, long tucked away, I’ve taken
out of its tissue paper wrapping. I’ve
taken everything – your body as a token
for the future. Even as the traffic
picks up on my cross-town street
and the church drums quiet for now,
finished with practice,
pausing before praise.
**
We’ve turned to the practical –
before the long drive you take
my car to your mechanics who
give it a once over. You buy me screws,
even down to brass tacks for the hook
in the shape of a stag where I want
to hang the extra set of keys. Keys
we seem to have found to each other’s
locked door of ache.
Wanting. Eyes’ desire, eyes’ please.
I am heart-ened now I please you,
now I take you in my teeth and gnaw,
take you hard against my waiting.
I have been waiting. I have been at once
alive to maybe and thick-skinned to no.
No ate at me, threatened the possible sky.
But now, call me yes. Call me a stone,
turning in the polishing tide.
Sarah Browning is the author of Killing Summer and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden. Co-founder and past Executive Director of Split This Rock, the poetry and social justice organization, she now teaches with Writers in Progress. Browning received the Lillian E. Smith Award and fellowships from DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, VCCA, Yaddo, and Mesa Refuge. She holds an MFA in poetry and creative nonfiction from Rutgers Camden and lives in Philadelphia. More at www.sarahbrowning.net