Snow is falling on the yellow leaves
And blowing across the nodding yellowing
And green leaves that have yet to fall. This
Is the third day in a row the sun
Has hidden as it rose if indeed it did rise
& it must have risen though I know in the pit
Of my guts with everything we’re doing here
The earth’s rotation is bound, too, to change
Not just the career of its seasons, the grief
& outrage of our relations. I have
Speculated before that certain enduring
Traditions, many of them called hermetic
Emerged specifically and only because a disciplined
And determined few were forced in on themselves
While being tyrannized by occupying armies
Or persecuted by their own leaders, or otherwise
Denied life. What you can actually live on
When it all comes down to it turns out to be
God, a single word, an untranslatable feeling
No monster and no person can ever take away.
I don’t mention this now for cold comfort
I only mean to point out it isn’t esoteric
That these days the only direction to go is deeper
Within. Which also means going against the state.
The beginnings of a feminine consciousness
Of the divine was only legislated in my mother’s
Lifetime and yes I know that’s not what the law
Was overtly about, but that IS what “a woman’s
Right to choose” amounts to, though the language
Is weak. My mother is enclosed
On the seventh floor of the West Wing at Mount
Sinai in New York City with the other psychiatric
Patients receiving care there according to and against
Their will. She is a casualty of the genocide
Of our people and the same war and the same
Regime that murdered her parents’ families and all
Of their friends and disappeared their world, which takes
It turns out, generations to come to grips with, and if this is the case
In my own family then think of the fresh horrors being innovated
Even now as I type and the lifetimes of haunting and horror
Thru which their awful lessons must be learnt. If my body
Did not enclose certain memories I’ve no idea
What I’d be writing to you now. These things happen according
To and against my own will simultaneously. I’m certain
At times my silence appears insufficiently militant.
Other times my speech seems delirious, an excess
Of the only privilege to which I have paid truly
Close attention: the fact or fiction I or we can even
Speak let alone speak freely. I happen to agree
That my body was given me by God and I say also that it is a figment
Of God. And also a fragment of God, which is shorthand for billions
Of years and thousands of people I obscurely sense but do not know
And scarcely know how to thank except by beauty. Squashes and squash
Flowers and flames on dressed candles and sugar skulls and the deep
Relief of truths in the presence of which you thank God at last cannot
And absolutely cannot hide. The truth my body forces me to know
Is the only reason I accept the roughness of this encounter
And every poem I write is the wavy chalk line I’ve drawn around
Myself, the perimeter I venture toward where I might meet you
And the boundary of what can be said for inner facts I’m bound
To testify to the existence of even as I am determined to not
Betray them. A certain Catholic jurist and her rapey colleagues
Are unworthy to judge the truth of my body. They are moreover incapable
Of perceiving its living and changing boundaries, or understanding
The flame life of my text. It should be up to us
To decide who counts as our peers and who is worthy to sit
In judgment of us. Only we can set the standard for such things.
The notion of a peer, the very notion of it, is a fascinating dream.
A bunch of us should devote real energy to the investigation of this dream.
A jury of your peers: what would that really mean to you?
You’d choose to be among the twelve and face you at your very
Worst, and even also at your very best? I have experienced
Miracles the Law ignores. The Law destroys, the Law incarcerates, the Law
Protects the powerful, the Law is partial, the Law is the wrong kind of blind,
The Law is becoming the slave of Satan, the Law is unwittingly
Committing suicide. I know things my religion and my father
Declined to teach me. I live in a small city and stood in the rain
For ninety minutes with hundreds of people to vote, two days ago.
The previous day I stood in a similar line waiting for a friendly
Woman to stick a cotton swab up my right nostril and turn it ten
Times clockwise, a new ceremony of our age. I passed
The test again, meaning the tickle in my throat and swollen
Glands and vague malaise I’ve felt since Friday March 13 2020
The day Breonna Taylor was murdered in her bed
Was my own affair and not precisely the pandemic in me
Though I would argue the pandemic is in me whether I test
Positive or not. This full
Moon is conjunct Uranus in Taurus, the revolution in all value, in what we call
Beautiful, the revolutionization of what has heretofore been
Understood as Beauty. Venus rules Taurus and she rules
Justice. Beauty rules money and physical goods and she names
The principle of healing and abundance here on Earth.
This moon is about the future. Dare I say she comes from it.
When you remember the dead you are not wallowing
In the past or some ditch of mere recollection. When the dead
Come down to teach you something it is because you
And they are futurists in the rock
And roll of obscure time, a trick
The universe plays on us to try and teach us
Again and again what life’s about, an ethic
We seem to have trouble catching onto. There is no getting out
Of this except to live it. Passing the Covid
Test reminded me how little of use medicine and politics
As we know them have ever had to offer my body.
Both have always been a con against women and especially
Against the people the state suppresses, incarcerates, expels,
And sterilizes. The right to life is a phrase of slavering irony
Worthy of Lucifer himself. I don’t know who exactly is telling
Me to write this but this isn’t literally about abortion it’s about
Your imagination. Imagine a jury of your peers. Who would
They be. Which people. Are they all people? Are there people
You know who really are worthy of passing judgment for
Or against you? Are they
Even all alive? Maybe only Dostoyevsky, Deren, Du Bois,
The Buddha, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jesus himself are worthy
Of judging you. A rock, a tree, a melody, a child, a puppy, a prayer
The coat of a murdered man, enclosing and protecting his abolished
Scent, traces of his breath. The more our structures are invalidated
By evil interests the more certain and swift their downfall.
One way or another, one way AND another, the entire
Book, the whole of the law, will have to be rewritten.
Ariana Reines was born in Salem Massachusetts. Her newest book, A Sand Book, won the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Prize. She runs Invisible College.
