Two Poems | Erika Rodriguez

Everybody Knows Each Other Here

I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the wren.

— Emily Dickinson

Written words are orphans, said Socrates, their author

​​ too far from the paths they may take

to defend them.

Imagine the​​ written word roaming, unarmed,​​ 

​​ naked, through the hands of every reader.

Every reader, a critic. Every written word, voiceless.

They cannot speak for themselves.​​ 

They​​ cannot​​ say​​ more​​ than​​ they​​ are.

In this town of seven thousand, I am like the​​ written word​​ 

Thought over, in my absence.

I did not understand “How dreary –

to be ​​ – Somebody! / How public – like a Frog” ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​ ​​​​ 

until I lived here, twice the size Amherst was

when Dickinson laid herself down in the nutshell of her poem,

inhaling the breath of a distant reader who would join her someday,​​ 

a ghost from the future.

I did not understand her and she could not explain herself,​​ 

her written words, to me.

But the language of this town has brought us​​ 

into the same private space.

And I know now that it is no quiet thing to be a wren.​​ 

Perpetually balancing and inquiring,

making itself heard across a great space—

Dickinson teaching me how to be​​ 

in a small town.

The other danger of writing, Socrates offered, is forgetting.

Unwritten thoughts must be revisited, trapped or anchored in memory.​​ 

Archived in writing, we can leave them,

let them dull.

Better to let these thoughts pass once through your memory​​ 

than be kept in mine forever. I send them to you

to be free of them. Freer from my loneliness. I send them to you

from the brushy thicket, to which they cannot return

Mastery and Acquisition, Revised: A Poem for the New Year

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

— Audre Lorde

But you hand me a​​ hammer

and I am like Midas

I am like better

than Midas

It turns into a paintbrush in my hand and

I draw an arc

like archive

like ark of the covenant

on the wall and

step through it

and I am in the park

We all are

It is hot but

a woman we’ve invited and not yet met is bringing ice

and so-and-so’s joyfriend has a tupper of cakes

to eat sweetly, quickly

and kisses

are in the air

late into the night

until they turn into lightning bugs

and we stumble home, already home

in the constellation of our​​ bodies.

that we have rested and filled.