"My poetry, like most of my habits, is the product of fixating on things until they don't bother me anymore."
Poetry tends to come from a place of inspiration, and that is the worst place for it to stay. It's the attention to detail that elevates it to a craft. Most people aren't willing to put in the work to bring around the final product.
Brittany has always gone above and beyond the call of craft for as long as I've known her. Her dedication and attention to detail show in the strength of her lines and sonics, building powerful rooms of memory that one steps into cleanly. Like any other writer born below the Mason-Dixon, her work is full of the hot pressure of the South and the concerns of home. We're proud to be presenting three of her new poems here at Little Death.
Begins, and begins, and begins
In the peach dawn glow
find me half destroyed
by the way you placed
your hand on the wheel;
smooth and familiar,
how I hoped to be.
On the front porch,
you laid out like a map.
I imagined you
were full of promise,
knowing that my favorite
places would always
remember you better.
Haunted by your soft
spot for spines and storms.
All those languid landscapes,
all those dried flowers
on your mantle, rose-
colored memories
spoil in your palm.
Elegy for Inaction
Lost on our way
to the Blue Ridge tunnel
on the coldest day of the year,
climbing mountains heavy
with purpose. I got tangled
up in bittersweet when I strayed
from the trail and used it
as a florid metaphor
in my goodbye letter.
I remember your library
like stagnant water breeding
mosquitoes and I refuse to envy
your surplus of self-control. So
I send Rilke quotes from Seattle,
The transformed speaks
only to relinquishers.
All holders-on are stranglers.
Words stretching out
like olive branches;
I continue to identify
as the dark circles
under your eyes.
I am the Rotunda and I am Monticello
with kudzu wrapped around my throat
and creeper clinging to my ankles.
That kind of strength and growth take time,
I know, but standing in front of you
like the Corinthian columns that raised me,
triumphant roots reach new depths.
Gather
“Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.”
-Robert Lowell
You can find me every Sunday morning
praying for the grace of accuracy,
as I gather words to drape over
the monument we built to seventeen.
Letting honeysuckle and lemonade
go straight to our heads, performances
of romance, hands Crusoeing in the tall grass.Your thighs are gentle like gardenias
and looking at you must be what it’s like
to discover an entire patch
of four leaf clovers. Unlike me, you stick
around, clinging like Virginia creeper
to the waists of a late afternoon shadow
or the chimney of your childhood home.Honey, you are like peaches in July—
maybe softer and sweeter but bruising
just as easy. Sweating in the soft
morning, we murmur like bumblebees.
Exhale violets and daffodils and make out
overgrown tomato plants through sunshine
and mason jars on your windowsill.