Rachel Schmieder-Gropen

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To the Ex-girlfriend in 
My Writing Circle:

Listen. I do not,
now, know which classes you
are taking or your favorite song
or how you spend your Sundays.

What I know is the state of your
wrist, the beat of your heart. I dig
into the hard earth of your last
poem, pry up dry slabs of shale
and find bone fragments beneath
— the fossilized moments that
keep you up at night.

(And I an archaeologist working
late nights at the lab, trying like
hell to piece together a skeleton
with nothing but the unwieldy,
impermanent intimacy of art.)
​

Australia

You tell me about Australia,
the inlets, the long nights,
the eucalyptus leaves whose
scent makes your mouth dry.
You used to lick them clean
of dew when you were a child
crawling through the bush.
 
Mostly I learn that everything
in Australia exists to kill you:
spiders the size of your fist,
wildfires roaring through
the dry tangles of the bush.
You show me a photo of
your father beating back
a blaze, silhouetted, black
against a spray of sparks.
 
Once, you say, a gwardar
slithered close as you slept
in the garden, and your mum
called “Margie, Margie!”
and frightened it closer.
(Your brother chopped its
head off with a shovel.)
You tell me about your
insomnia, the blind walks
you take at night, the naps
you might as well take by
the inlet because snakes
are everywhere.
 
I joke about sharks in the
River Cam, and you say,
don’t. Your best friend’s
little brother was killed
by a shark last Christmas.
I ask, why not you?
 
You were born with your
cord wrapped tight around
your neck and ever since
nothing has been human
enough to kill you.
 
I try to swallow, feel the
dry rustle of your coils
about my throat, remind
myself that you’re human
enough to swallow me
whole.
​

Taking Inventory

Last weekend she dyed the tips
of her hair forest green. She’s been
wearing sweater dresses and tall boots
in this hot chocolate weather, and it
is killing me without the metaphor.
 
The crease of her cheeks might as well
be my Xanax prescription, a full bottle
of whiskey, vodka I would mix with
orange juice if I did not want to feel
the burn. Her snub nose, a loaded gun.
Her dark eyes, a snowbank or a lake.
Soft hands. Sharp stones. Everything
has potential.
​

Heredity

Two rows ahead, a girl has fallen 
asleep on her mother’s shoulder,
breathing quietly, straw-straight
hair shifting with the double
movement of their chests. She 
must have gotten that hair from
her mother, or at least the idea
of it -- the silk of it copied in
sandy blond, the lines traced
and colored by different hands.
Perhaps she has learned to love
this music from her mother, or --
enough to let it cradle her to a
comfortable sleep. I wonder if
she inherited the blue jacket on
the back of her chair, that pale
skin, that slight rattling snore.
Did those breaths grow together
into a single rhythm, rise and fall
over a decade of concerts the way
their bodies learned to bleed,
together, with the motion of the
moon?

Rachel Schmieder-Gropen's profile

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Intervention

At Moose Hill Camp,
catching dragonflies was 
the thing to do. 

I was an expert,
holding my breath and tip-
toeing through yellow grasses
on old-sneaker feet, 
careful not to bend a stalk,
careful not to stir the air.

I caught the dragonflies
with two fingers, pinning
their crackle-glass wings
between index and middle,
lifting their bright bodies
like stained glass to the sun.

All the while, their tails
curled, uncurled, recurled,
their sticky legs scrambled
for footholds in the air.
Only their wings were still,
pressed between my skin.

I didn’t yet know that doctors
weren’t supposed to create
their own patients. 

As it was, I saved them all.
I always found a missing leg,
a bent antenna, a crumpled
patch of wing -- something
I could fix with a peeled twig,
a driblet of leaf-juice, a finger.

These were summer’s 
marrow-bones, how I sucked 
them dry:

I caught small things  
and tried to save them,

hoping years later that I hadn’t
killed them.
​

Outgrowing

​I am shedding you like snakeskin,
dropping your certainty of my selfhood
in the dust like discarded armor,
smooth rings rusted sharp,
hammered breastplate bent
in the shape of a fist, Caroline --
 
I stopped existing the second
you left me behind, remade myself
atom by atom, moment by moment:
 
I have developed a taste for Icelandic
candies, I have stopped cringing
at the mention of sex and this summer
I learned how to use a drill.
 
You don’t know me, not this particular
living me; you can’t find me now
and I am new and safe, undiscovered,
skin soft and raw, red as peeled fruit.
 
I am shedding you like snakeskin.
I will not define myself with your
constriction: watch me leave my own
unfollowed tracks through the dust.
​

Boomerang

She taught me how to throw
a boomerang, wrapped her
long fingers around my wrist
and pulled me into a twist,
a flick.

“It shouldn’t come back,”
she said, her fingers cool,
her breath sour and hot
with wine. She pointed
at the hedgehog in the
distance, the dark lump
hazy on a rain-wet lawn.

“It’s supposed to hit its
target, see?” She opened
her fingers, let my hand
fall to my side like a leaf
shaken loose in a storm.

I asked her if she caught
her dinner every night
with a boomerang. For
a second, I thought she
might hit me. Instead,
she watched me with
raised eyebrows, took
another sip. It struck me
​
that my heart is a boomerang
with terrible aim. It never
hits its target, but it always
comes back.

​
         ❦

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