by Margaret Saigh
HOW CAN I EVER GET TO THAT TRUE RENDER
A moth the size of an oat seed is captive in here
it was something like cracks in the sky where the light poured in, in that way you might think, God
by this I mean there may be a ceiling on my capacity to love you
a pothos supported by a single chopstick
Yesterday I said
you push me away because you’re scared
I said two times
I think we have to break up
You should know that all this is true and that I truly believe
the power of love
supposed in the leaves of the plant
I’ve propagated for you
have licked themselves to that third dimension
Inherent to art is the impossibility of telling the truth
I think that
you might never get to that true render
what Stevens describes as
not the image of the thing but the thing itself
MORAINE
Is where the glacier lingered
and you can say that with permission.
You can follow your eye across the landscape
and you follow your eye eye eye.
We all see it’s like a slide
that place the glacier paused.
We can talk about will and allowing yourself to be moved.
When I write move it seems more desperate than it is.
What I meant to say was wind
that love can be very very desperate
yes, meltingMEANDER
I never told you, but I used to be obsessed with rivers.
As a child, my father played
along the branch of the Chicago River
that ran near his house. He started small
illegal fires by the banks with his friends
who he confessed
never truly understood him. I do not know
how much of this is true
or if I see myself in him.
****
Margaret Saigh is the author of three chapbooks, most recently, I've Created A Thing That Will Never Bring Me Pleasure (Pitymilk 2025) and the creator of circlet, a poetry workshop and reading series. Her writing has been published widely in print and across the web. She received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh.