We are all only ever stories
passing through the pages
of our own manifestos;
“May we be brave,” she said
to her one-in-five sisters,
“Do not forgive me,” he said
to his one-in-twelve chances,
“Remember my number”
to the millions of millions.
We flit through the lines and call
it all fate until we tales,
chased by the wild night,
pass silent into the flyleaf.
By Heidi Turner
“When were there ever any answers?”
You asked me that when we were in love
and I kissed your hand, our fingers interlaced,
a strong indication I didn’t know what to say,
and I told you I only looked for clever questions,
to which you replied: “you lie poorly,”
sweeping me into an alternate universe in which
all of this happened, in which we are still looking
at each other, still asking how to hold galaxies
in the canyons between our touching fingerprints.
By Heidi Turner
I wait in yellow lamppost light
for the guide who can show me
the way to the West, below the
Elvenlands, the place of the lions
roaring
long hidden in chivalrous shadow,
the secret kept in the time fulfilling,
the untamed truth in-bound in spring,
I wait in yellow lamppost light.
By Heidi Turner
“Careful, dear, be gentle
And gently place that in its box,
back where you found it.
I’m asking kindly; I will not ask again.”
Must I start counting?
“One. Two.”
I didn’t reach three.
“My goodness, how did it break?
Well, don’t cry, child,
it was only a sentimental thing.
Smile, dear, we’ll find another one.”
See, nothing to cry about.
By Heidi Turner
Sand between the folds of your shirt
falling
as you stood above me, held out your
hand
and helped me to my feet that day; you
already
knew I was reading the lines of your palm,
feeling
the heartbeat I wanted to believe in—believe
me
when I say that I don’t regret enough to
cry
until long after the waves are silenced,
before
you, I didn’t imagine I could make
contact.
By Heidi Turner
I rolled over onto the space you do not inhabit
and fell through the bedsheets to the floor
at the bottom of the cave in my chest,
the one I account for in my every interaction,
brushed myself off and wondered where the exit
is, what song will play when I escape the shadows.
And yet, perhaps it’s less complicated than it seems:
maybe I’m only practicing, learning what to expect
when I finally fall headfirst.
By Heidi Turner
The only forest I remember
was orange and red
in the autumn sunset,
fiery leaves blowing in the wind
and sailing across the road
where I was watching,
searching for the three evergreen
trees that stood silent
in the graveyard,
waiting for winter to come.
By Heidi Turner
I saw you under your streetlamp
for the first time in weeks,
a shadow dancing in madness,
whistling with the trees
we cut down in 1944.
Our former selves lingered, and
the past antiqued itself overnight:
memories erase their pencil lines,
the yellowing glow turns to ashes
in the blazing winter dawn.
By Heidi Turner
Once, we were children together;
we dove into the sea from the side
of the ship and swam down to the city
where the coral skyscrapers
reached toward an impossible sky
and we lived blind for one too many
minutes, friend, we found Atlantis,
and I left behind my secrets in the bay:
I’ve been chasing blue my whole life.
By Heidi Turner
It started, seed-shaped, encased in a metallic
shine left over from the stars above me
when I found the beginning and pulled
the red thread out, when I watched the flight
plan turn to smoke in the turbines
and it became itself so far from me
even as I gently unraveled the cables
I’d left alone so long: this is my thumb
extended, measuring my mushroom cloud.
By Heidi Turner
We’ve never had coffee together
and you’ve sat alone for dozens
of days, drinking your macchiato,
pretending someone is on the way,
but today, your stomach boiled
and did not take the coffee well
all because I’d told you, for once,
I would join you across the table
and play a game of invisible chess.
By Heidi Turner
I had a muse once who loved
the work I never finished
and who watched drafts burn
in the fireplace with a smile;
she was five years’ old
and knew better than I,
that better drafts
might come if I erased smudges,
a life in seventeen more years.
By Heidi Turner
Earl Grey makes fog of the past;
I no longer remember the smell
of your hair or shaving cream,
the wood-smoke perfume on your skin
or the lotion you rubbed on your arms,
and the rising steam crystallizes the sky
as it was when I did not look back
or did not cry – believe either story, or none –
the look in my eyes you did not see,
or are still haunted by on sober nights.
I will not return to you: I do not now,
even while your presence fills the air
and the ghosts of us eat breakfast together.
By Heidi Turner
You’re the lit cigarette on the railway
thrown from a train car in the Wild West
that will not spread fire over the map
to a theme song no one gets out of their head;
there is no chart for where we are
and the rivers are crossed but once,
and this one time I might just pick up the trail
and follow it to the edge, where the rails
meet the ocean. Either that, or I’ll leave
a brand-new poem beside yours
and see if it bothers to catch flame.
By Heidi Turner
I took a step back last night
just when my toes curled around
the edge of the cliff
overlooking the sea
that haunts my dreams on weekends
I don’t spend at your house.
You never knew this,
but you were not the reason
I stayed alive; you were the eyes
behind my head when I used to
take that one last step.
By Heidi Turner
A man without gloves on once asked,
“why don’t you fight no more?”
before he swung for my jaw
and I ran down the street,
past the kids tagging walls
and into an alley I’d abandoned
when it still smelled like us,
and when you smelled like vodka.
Last night, I doubled back
and scrawled on the bricks:
“Ain’t nothin’ to fight
that’s bigger than me.”
By Heidi Turner
I’m a leaking Chevy leaving antifreeze
on the road ten miles from home,
the last train pulling into Victoria Station
when the London Fog rolls down;
the fog itself sometimes, swirling and filled
with smoke; I am a broken string backstage,
red footprints in the snow.
By Heidi Turner
In the end, I want to be leaning forward
toward the light, whatever light is coming,
watch it zoom past me and take me up
in its arms – I want to slap away the hands
trying to keep me still even while holding
them in mine: Love, the light is really there,
shining in the back of our best moments,
the glow that lights newborns, the sunrise,
first coffees, the stars, the dark,
I’ll lean forward farther, fall against
my legs in supplication: when it finds me,
I want to want the light.
By Heidi Turner
Happy birthday, Jesus.
I’m sorry about the genocides
and the racism I didn’t notice
and the sexism I got hung up on
and how I didn’t notice crosses
are a little phallic until just now…
I forgot my party hat and didn’t
forget that I hate the [censored] Party
and I didn’t pray as much as I should have
and didn’t give you cake and didn’t take
Communion, but if you don’t mind,
I finally sat down in the wrapping paper
carnage (a full day late) to say:
Happy Birthday Anyway.
By Heidi Turner
I don’t understand how the moon
stays in the sky through half the day,
watching the city, blocked by smog,
boxed into the firmament
in ever-stronger clouds of smoke.
This thought came to me
yesterday, when you asked
over coffee how I could be so sad,
since I was also happy; I smiled
and added half-and-half, silent.
By Heidi Turner
