Aras Zeug

Homage to DONIKA KELLY

the text has been sitting on my walls for a while

several countries and different flats, but

each time: above my desk

each time: the glue behind the yellow note paper

struggling slightly more to stick, the red ink

more and more transparent under the sun

I wrote it and I did not write it

the traces of the letters are mine

the spacing between the words

the tall skinny I’s, the rounded M’s, the sharp Ts

an homage to someone else’s phrases on my tongue

in red ink flowing from my body

bleeding me dry

I traced each sign carefully years back

and when I did, I fucked the verses up, started

midway through, mixed

one line with the next

remade stanzas as the paper allowed

while I savoured each word on my tongue

I repeated them over and over

and over and over

tonight

practice

trust

somewhere

I imagined foothills, valleys and drives

and trust. I trusted. I trusted her more than myself

at first. But then I knitted a blanket of her words

with which to warm my skin at dusk

and when I sat on my bed alone

fingertips running through its holes

I could finally hug both

sorrow and hope

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Statement of Homage

I first heard Donika Kelly’s “In the Chapel of St. Mary’s” in a podcast, walking a friend’s dog on a rainy Swedish morning at wintertime. I was sad and unhopeful: strained from a former best friend, struggling to hold onto newer relationships. Her poem whispered quietly through headphones right into my eardrums, Kumo (the dog) pulling the leash insistently, a few tears rolling from eyes to cheeks, dripping under several layers of clothing…I found a new, open space inside my chest where I could breathe wide. I would think it ironic at first, to fall for a poem about faith and trust when I had renounced my childhood creed years back (Catholicism runs deep within many families’ traditions in Spain, so I had learned the rituals and performances of the Church as a summer-time altar girl under my grandparents’ wing). But then, the poet is herself a non-believer, she does not know why she entered the Chapel either, she can’t tell us what happened there. There : a location of place and a state of mind and an opening of the chest. Like her, I needed a space inside where trust could exist. Like her, I needed to practice. I needed to make a little practice. Back home, while Kumo disappeared down the hall wagging his tail, I put away his harness, his poop bags, his toys. I grabbed a yellow note paper from the kitchen counter. I wrote three of the verses down. I whispered them. I read them again and again and again. Breathed. Smiled.

Donika Kelly

Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations and Bestiary (Graywolf). A Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she earned an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. Originally from Los Angeles, Donika currently lives in Iowa City with her wife, working as an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches creative writing.

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