“like light, refracted, the part of the waves” - Lara Mimosa Montes

Danika Stegeman’s second book, Ablation, was released by 11:11 Press in November 2023. Her book Pilot (2020) was published by Spork Press. She’s a 2023 recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and recently spent a 2-week residency in Marathon, TX outside Big Bend National Park. Her website is danikastegeman.com.

Field

My mother is a nebula. My mother’s eyes are closed
like she’s already a ghost. An exoskeleton twins her.
She collapses time. I never called her my mother.

My mother isn’t inside the car but neither is she
outside the car. Dust disperses. Her hand clutches
the door. Her hand clutches the door with devotion

and necessity. Her love has painted the body in two-
toned blue. You can’t see it, but the car’s backseat is raw
unupholstered metal. Memory is a host. My dead live

here in a corridor of rust thatched together in a
ramshackle structure. The grass is overgrown.
When my mother is pregnant, her voice refracts

against porcelain as she spills outward. Her scales
feather the drain. Seeds spread. The home we left
is a field. I watch the field dismantle the shack,

swallow rust. My mother clutches the car’s door
as though it’s what keeps her upright, what keeps her
from collapsing, what keeps her from vanishing.

Remember the quiet evenings. My mother is liminal.
My mother is cleft, between worlds. She speaks to me.
She speaks to me from a mouth filled with clover.


from Ablation (2)
Trauma
passes across
generations. This is
what’s meant by circulatory
system.
Before
birth, my body felt my mom’s pain.
I recall her life, store
her hurt in dark
corners.

Soundscape
as offering,
the tremendous ache of
ice that cracks and settles hollow
and deep
in my
chest cavity. The echo is
in me, but you can’t
hear it past the
static.

I’m just
a pattern of
cells trying to heal through
repetition. It’s easy to
become
nothing.
It’s easy to speak softly and
shadow by, guttering
like a waking
nightmare.

Keening
of flowers. The
chop and hum of blades in
the heart of a machine. What I
suffer
trembles
when faced with what my mom endured.
Battered body. Mute voice.
Rape a bitter
wellspring.

Whispers
swell into a
low moan. Your life is
the gift of our will to survive.
I’d break
glass and
swallow smoke for you. She’d tear her
last dollar in half, cross
plains to help you
escape.

I eat
paper and vow
never to take the same
route. A river will sharpen to
cut through
its own
curve and form a new path. Agnes
Martin said we give up
things that cover
our mind.


You're listening to the poems of Danika Stegeman on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.