Hannah dierdorff
Winner of the 2022 Pink Prize for Poetry
EXTENDED SONNET WITH TURKEY VULTURES
inside the apartment complex, i practice belief in death
the way I once believed in god—the fall
from the balcony, the red bolt through the body,
then the holy emptiness, the self erased, cleaned.
six hawks in the distance, spiraling. turkey vultures
maybe. too far to see. the morning is a mirror
in which i do not recognize myself. carnivorous,
cadaverous. hidden litanies of death trailing everything
i name. i've seen the casualties of desire—scraps
of fur on october roads, bones and trash bleaching
in the weeds. chick-fil-a cup, rusted hub cap,
plastic sheetz bag. how to speak the word love
in a landfill. how to praise the body that continues
to eat. a rooftop vent flickers in the sun, exhaling
exhaust into a tree. i tell myself i'm learning
to touch the shape of my life like the gray trunk
of a beech in which a scarlet tanager sings
shureet shureet.
A BRIEF LESSON IN RIMMING
AN APOSTATE’S ABECEDARIAN
All fall i complain to you about the light. Two days
before the solstice, the optometrist explains the irregular
curve of my eyes. Astigmatism he says but i think stigmata:
desire converging to a point of pain on a saint's
exalted palms or feet, the sudden bloom of blood from
francis's side mirroring the wounds of his beloved christ. In
giotto's painting, beams of light extend from a
hovering crucifix through the kneeling francis as
if his body is just another window, a glass frame for
joy and sorrow to pass through. i never
knew the word miraculous even when i still
longed for a shadow i called lord to touch
me in the night. In the new year, you and i climb the cliffs
near summersville lake, your body above me in a blur
of opaline light. My neck cranes back, rope
passing between my hands as you ascend, the sun's
quiver piercing my eyes. Why this grief as you
rise away from me? Ice breaks open on the lake's blue
sheen. In the painting, gold rods pin his body into place,
thanks the saint's only reply. What ties us together is wholly
unholy: a dirty green rope knotted at our hips. i am
vicious and infested with vice. My vision muddies
when you bite my neck under the dark's stars and signs, your
sex pressed to my pelvis where god never came.
Yes, every second a supernova explodes. Some
zeal asks for pain in the absence of touch. Even at its
zenith, can tenderness say enough?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Originally from Spokane, Washington, Hannah Dierdorff is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, where she taught poetry and writing. She is the recipient of the 2022 Dogwood Literary Prize, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cut Bank, About Place, Arkansas International, Willow Springs, and elsewhere.