Two Poems

Why Survive?

a cento

To see if it was true.
To see what comes next.

To give the body a chance. 
To be, but you are also in air and sand and earth.

To go on a run somewhere with lindens.
To match the zigzag of the clear sky’s lightning,

its alien script across the sky.
To host the latter-day bee, 

who is a midwife by virtue.
To marvel at time, at the long reach 

of life’s bottomless watering.
To drink, in the afternoon, and 

to celebrate the anniversary of a lakeside bar.
To feel possessed of a soul that’s better schooled

under a dome of choral sound.
To be both music and comfort.

To mark arrangements of blue. 
To be drenched and dried in the sun’s bright voltage.

To see her stumbling out on the other shore 
sending up a riot of yellow flowers.

To see her knees. Oh God, the thin tendons. 
To leave behind belonging, for moving. 

To try to explain where you are— 
the jumbled, sun-bleached universe: Hold on

to say wisdom will come,
to mean no harm, or to not especially, just now, be looking for it. 

To stand on desert dirt wishing stars would fall,
another bright reminder 

belief is not a requirement to go on living. 
Nevertheless, live.


A Blessing for Survivors of the Anthropocene

a cento

Let our leaders of today go back into the past,
down through the great broken heart.
Let them flower in each other’s arms.

Only that which exists can be spoken of.
I pray I may be ready with my witness. 
Come wind, come rain, come winter or the night; 
fumes that injure the tender landscape. 
The glaciers relinquish their secrets: that sound is the ice bowing.
Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky. 

May one survive that other eyes may drink the green.
May ginger and turmeric flourish.
May we remember that holiness exists in the ordinary elements of our lives,
in long grass. Let the stars appear.
Let us smell rain. Let the breeze through an oak hymn.

O, ill-willed dark, give with the sound of rain. 
Beyond the face of fear, 
go. Let there be only paradise
Let less happen.


“Why Survive”: Lines taken from (in order): L.I. Henley, Derek Robbins, Landon Godfrey, Martha Collins, Talin Tahajian, Amit Majmudar, T. J. McLemore, Austin Segrest, Hannah VanderHart, E. Bradfield, David Salner, Virginia Konchan, Anne Bangrover, Lucia Perillo, Mary Barnard, Keetje Kuipers, Benjamin Landry, Lucia Perillo, Elizabeth Bradfield, Alice Friman, Elizabeth Bradfield, Gina Franco, Tony Hoagland, Anne-Marie Thompson, V. Penelope Pelizzon, Carl Phillips, Javier Zamora, Samantha Tetangco, Tony Hoagland, Gwendolyn Brooks

 

“A Blessing for Surivors”: Lines taken from (in order): Margaret Burroughs, Galway Kinnell, John S. Anson, Fanny Howe, John Berryman, Charles Reznikoff, Michael Davidson, D. A. Powell, George Meredith, Margery Mansfield, Karen An-Hwei Lei, Luci Tapahonso, Jane Kenyon, Justin Phillip Reed, Lisel Mueller, Lucille Clifton, Charles Olson, Kay Ryan

Molly Bess Rector

Molly Bess Rector lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas where she directs the Open Mouth Literary Center. She earned her MFA in poetry from the University of Arkansas, and is the recipient of residencies from the Edward F. Albee Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center, as well as a grant by the Artists 3 60 program. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Best New Poets 2019, among others.

Twitter: @mollybessrector

Instagram: @clusterofbugs

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it was night and the ground was steamy