Archive
Gloriosa
by Heidi Hart
after a song collected by Alfonso X de Castille (1221-1284)
Press your face to the earth. The Glorious One
will pass by in the night, she who brings
the dead to life again, she who straightens
out the broken limbs. Listen, pilgrim girl,
she’ll break your backwards feet while you
are fast asleep. Did you expect your healing
to be painless? No, you’ll cry out.
You’ll think you are dying. And your father
will not see the visitor who works your soles
like clay. Pilgrim girl, press your face
closer to the earth, the ground you’ll walk
for the first time, forever, circling the world
until the day you are too tired to walk
and lie down, crying out, waiting for the Holy
Mother to appear and break your body
backwards, snap you free into the blessed dark.
Heidi Hart holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her published work includes the memoir Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice (University of Utah Press, 2004) and the four-poet collection Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press, 2007). She is a singer and voice teacher who also teaches creative writing at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
Materia Medica
by Heidi Hart
In the gutter, maple keys, dried elm pods,
human hair, a shredded document
I gather with my bare hands, stuff into
a plastic bag and carry home. I twist it all
into a tall clear bottle that held spring water
from Norway, empty for a year. Long hair
catches on my thumbnail. I turn over
one thread of the paper with its font too small
to read, even if I could sew back its words.
An elm pod cracks and spills its seed. I fill
my cryptic and useless prescription,
knowing that the world’s hungry
for healing, not knowing what crushed herb
or tincture it can take. All I have is this,
a cylinder of silenced words and seeds that
will not grow, sloughed human cells,
bacteria that bloom invisibly in summer heat.
I add a sprig of fresh thyme.
Steam is rising in the glass.
Heidi Hart holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her published work includes the memoir Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice (University of Utah Press, 2004) and the four-poet collection Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press, 2007). She is a singer and voice teacher who also teaches creative writing at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
qarrtsiluni 