“Things explain each other not themselves.” - George Oppen

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.

She joins us remotely from her home.

Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Danika, what poems have you brought for us today?

I mouth the word “motherless,”

and it’s a cut that misses, a cut made clean, the clasp of a
snapdragon’s jaw. I mouth the words corn hopper, hair combs,
hand-painted flowers, grayscale photos with Exacto knife edges.
I keep these things in a box.

Anxiety pins me in place. I’ve got 60 needles aimed at my center,
one point for each year of her life. I stare at cracks in the asphalt
and can’t seem to leave the parking lot. The funeral home’s across a street
torn to gravel they’ll repave next week. I move forward to hug my friend,
but he and his wife move away slightly. My mom has died during a pandemic.
The air’s not safe. Don’t touch your face. For God’s sake,
don’t touch each other
or speak closely.

I feel like a thousand dead birds, one brother says. It’ll take months
to transfuse our veins with sand and several more before we can bear
the heat of our blood again.

I tried to watch the sunset, but I couldn’t, the other brother says, the clouds
got in the way. It’s overcast but refuses to rain until we’ve left for the quiet
of our homes.

Weeks later, the sky’s heart still bends light, but it matters less. Handful of red,
handful of copper. My sister speaks in tongues, but what she’s asking for is money.
Her loss sharpens. She tucks cash in her pockets and places the sympathy cards
in front of me. I face the stack and cut the leaves out, then add them to my grief box.
I mishear her words as dust in my heart, wind in my hair.

I don’t need anything.

The sun bleeds through the clouds. I look up,
and cut paper leaves pour from my eyes.


from Ablation (1)

My mom,
as a dark-haired
girl, lay still to keep her
heart from fluttering. A glacier
lapses
time, moves
through variations and exists
as many glaciers, a
palimpsest shorn
present.

See through
the window panes
of my eyes. Same/not-same
chromosomes mutate a me in-
to a
you. Love
like a radar map. Love like
infrared. Love like heat
or light pouring
in waves.

I want
to show you how
my life feels. I’ve given
you my life. Cumulus clouds move
in a
wall. Heat
lightning. I wash my face in a
basin of rain, count the
molecules in
prisms.

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