two poems by Lilia Marie Ellis
nightmare and interpretations 1
I didn’t see the glass breaking
but nonetheless I was falling we
all were too fast to realize we
might even survive and when
we landed Joe Biden was there
shouting he’d save us but I thought
maybe he didn’t mean from this
crisis but from the crime of existing
near one another and anyway
I suspect it was his fault one way
or another so while I was falling I
counted names and wondered
how strange it was we ever
gave them and Joe died (off-screen
I didn’t know another storm
of glass and gravity) clouds
rolled in he’d promised to
keep us safe I thought fuck
him even though we weren’t
dead just hurting at his funeral
(Joe’s) which took place at the end
of the world he gave his own
eulogy as lungs from the casket
something about how you can do
whatever your heart is set to
believe in the way your self
separates from its corpse and leaves
behind I don’t know how it
ended (the speech) because another interruption another splintering
down we fell
It was another day in the future and I was proud to be alive, though not for any particular reason. Many people think pride is a sin, but if you’re right to be proud isn’t it the honest thing—shouldn’t the sun feel proud of its flames, its refusal to quit, shouldn’t the oceans feel proud to pull the moon back from so far away, shouldn’t each body feel proud for existing at all, shouldn’t the cliff feel proud for collapsing into the sea, people aboard or no, isn’t it to be admired, you can set a watch to the speed at which it drags bones under roaring waves, isn’t it be something to be proud of your home and pride means admitting faults but admiring the shape of them, doesn’t it,
And when the ending comes who could refuse the beauty of it—each life we lived, how some people think they get away with cruelty,
nightmare and interpretations 3
I dreamed of a woman who
dreamed or so she told me
she said she’d lived there
seven years only realizing
it now and in the meantime,
love, family, her first sense
of joy, it was her life I suppose
real enough and quite suddenly
one day her walls crumbled one
world deep with crystalline
specks of light (she said) and most
people disappeared the dream
ended leaving her with nothing
at all she said the worst part
was the loneliness she could go
back easily if it weren’t for that
something off about the light and
a billion days conglomerated she
would have to live her life
differently this time she was
wailing.
The scriptures are quite clear that the world is a form of filth. I suppose one has many infinitesimal reasons for sculpting love out of filth, which one leaves behind in the half-light like bacteria growing at the perfect temperature. The shaking of Earth, dirt coming down from the ceiling, the myth of duality was only just a myth until we were made to feel alien from our bodies and thereby the soul became real, and also terrible. Let alone everyone else’s. Many of today’s treasures will one day be regarded as disasters. Some people walk on thorns and do not care and when asked why they say they are tired. But the kingdom of God is within us, which has consistently remained true even as many of us grew out of scriptures.
Lilia Marie Ellis is a trans woman writer from Houston. Her work has appeared in various publications including trampset and The Nashville Review. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @LiliaMarieEllis