in parentheses

Denise Bickford Hopkins (they/theirs) is a queer poet originally from midcoast Maine. Their work can be found in Foglifter, Baest, and Stolen Island, among others, and their chapbook (Repka) is available through Dancing Girl Press. Denise graduated from Boise State University in 2016 with their MFA in creative writing. They currently live in Pullman, Washington.

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Weathering

With which the winter comes and turns the heart to carrion
With which an everlasting openness settles in you, cresting
As waxwings searching for the waiting inlet from the snow
With which your plexus wrings itself against the shoreline
With which the shoreline breaks itself into mirror fragments
Fragments stuck in the act of sharpness, without memory of
Fluidity, breastmilk, friendly tongues. Fragments hard & glasslike
& Your eye cannot find home within one of its many reflections

The heart
is weathering
The heart
cannot fly today
(any more)
The heart
in act of consumption
Learns it is meat
& turns its
own teeth inward 

Rain, Heat Approaching

Today when it rains, it seems like the first time
head turned upward to the gray and one wet kiss heaps
Itself into my eye. I put a finger to it, like dipping into
the first lake’s thaw.
Later, same fingers fumble in a deeper wet, my body
revolting against the calendar. Soon, I will be letting
my womb rebirth itself and the pain remove me —
next week, 101. No rain in sight. 

The Angriest Dog in the World

today i was called a Baby Killer
i’ll admit

sometimes to walk home weeping
because of how alone it is when
the cross-eyed neighbor cats aren’t being

out that one particular night the sun sets
so early here out of habit and
things ceased in what light left

and wanted to hold such once flesh
animal that somehow
seemed sadder with lashes folded between
each other, a kind of cross-
species ritual to quiet falling
beneath that tree wholly, not remnants in the road

to room on all fours like
my hands inexplicably splayed and
nails semi-glossed to see
the broken match head still on the
floor is not a beetle 

Invocation of Marina

Ill prepared for the cold and to walk
in solemn procession down the coastline
with waves in quiet crest the votive foam
habited salt and sisters You and I sit under
a bronze mermaid and offer each other forgiveness
& this is what we do I still pray to goddess marina
and her selfhood in the seafoam forgive me, father
this is no rejection of hosts her eyes messiahed
over the water as if to call it in Capsize me I pray
as the past over-forgives itself onto my neck
at least it is warm in spots I believe in
one goddess Marina who gave herself
over to seafoam because she could not
kill that earthly love I believe in the body as seafoam
after it becomes no use I look forward to the
dissolution of the dead and the lack
of the earth to touch

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