Malech, "Here Name Your"

My friend spends all summer

mending fence for the elk to blunder

back down and the cows to drag

the wires and the snow to sit and sag

on, so all the twist and hammer and tauten

and prop amounts at last to nought, knot, tangle.

The next year he picks

up his pliers and fixes

the odds all over again. There are no

grownups, and I think that all of us children know

and play some variation on this theme, the game of all join

hands so that someone can run them open.

Then war whoops, shrieks, and laughter

and regather together

as if any arms might ever really hold.

I’m trying to finger the source—pleasure of or need

for—these enactments of resistance, if Resistance

is indeed their name. I’m trying to walk the parallels to terminus—

call them lickety-split over rickety bridge,

tightrope, railroad tie, or plank as you see fit—

trying to admit to seeing double,

innumerable,

to finding myself beset by myself

on all sides, my heart forced by itself,

for itself, to learn not only mine

but all the lines—

crow’s flight, crow’s-feet, enemy, party, picket,

throwaway, high tide, and horizon—to wait

in the shadows of scrim each night

and whisper the scene. Always, some part

of the heart must root for the pliers, some

part for the snow’s steep slope.

Dora Malech