My Enemy. My Love.

By Ruth Ellen Kocher

After Kara Walker’s “Tar pit,” 2021

We end easy. Your hand always your hand,
not mine. Your hand before and behind me,

vertigo cinching the quiver in my teeth,
canine as well as wisdom in repose,

my jaw gut-locked beyond silence.
Silence, O Love, this sound without sound,

this air pickled in methane, this black under-
ground, velvet respite from a squall of hounds

so the tree’s branches stay silent, too,
spin not leaves but spirit, watching, too. O Enemy,

see how the mountain happens. See a doorway
yield to the sway of my skirts. See the forest

open like an eye filled with the primordial mud
rot makes of us, even you. O Blackness, source,

light, fire, fuel, lover. I am nearly soaked through
in your obsession, gassy and green,

your simulacrum of not. Your viscous brink.
Transmute a woman into the image of a woman.

A minor supplication casts me blue as valley
tunneled beneath sky, a substrate of happening,

your hand, my back, treacherous love,
how easy, our end, O end, how free.

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Kara Walker: Back of Hand.” View all artwork from the portfolio, including the one this poem is after, or read the rest of the portfolio in the April 2024 issue.

Source: Poetry (April 2024)