little thistle blues, Milla van der Have

when i grow up i want to be small again

small like a rainforest

small like the letters on the back of your hand

                   : blues on skin, a spell against forgetting

 

i want to be small like time is small

when you notice other things

like how spittle moves along with her lips when she speaks her truth

like how she carves a kitchen into being and dwells there

 

(i have been many things recently

a mountain gorge, the slit in the eye of a sheep, a tendency

to over-explain, the colour yellow

but never not small and i miss it)

 

                   when we are small we should be simple

                   a circle that doesn’t go anywhere : a sermon with no

                   promise of heaven, bother-weeds

 

                   when we are simple we can say

                   there, there little thistle

                   give me your song · open your eyes

 

                   allow the wind to rustle your skin as it has done mine

©  

Milla van der Have (The Netherlands, 1975) is a Gemini. Her poetry has been published in The Dialogist, Chestnut Review, Menacing Hedge and Ninth Letter a.o. She’s the author of the 2016 chapbook Ghosts of Old Virginny. Milla lives and works in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with her wife and two rabbits (that sometimes appear in her poetry).

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