Rosa Lane – Poetry

In times like these, how important it is to listen and recognize our shared humanity beyond dictates of facile binaries. Rosa Lane’s book of poems, Called Back, is a tribute to Emily Dickinson, her linguistic originality, her fierce passions and complexity. Each poem begins with a reference to one of Dickinson’s poems. Lane gives us a sense of Dickinson’s otherness, her erotic desires, and her sense of cultural suppression. The language in these poems is rich and sometimes arcane, both as a tribute to Dickinson’s genius and verbal wealth, and also perhaps to remind us that we are still visiting another time and place. The tension in “Othered [I speak]” is between desire and cultural suppression, between speaking and being hushed. We can feel the speaker’s sense of “wrongness” in her gender identity, and her desire to slip into another body.

I wonder if “Dear Sir, (No. 7)” even needs an introduction, given how Lane has created so well the desire for what feels unattainable, picking up on “Love’s stricken ‘why’” in the epigraph.  This Dickinson asks, “Why I long for doors / that cannot open,” and before that, “Why when I visit Eden, / I want Eve, not Adam.” The poem exudes sensuality. When has a teacup ever been so sexy? And how poignant that moon at the end, going from full to sickle.

Betsy Sholl, MAJ Poetry editor

These poems are from Called Back (2024, Tupelo Press), and “Dear Sir, (No.  7)” first appeared in Nimrod International Journal, Awards issue, Fall 2022. Rosa Lane is author of four poetry collections: Called Back (2024, Tupelo Press); Chouteau’s Chalk, winner, Georgia Poetry Prize (2019, UGP); Tiller North, winner, National Indie Excellence Award (2016, Sixteen Rivers Press); and Roots and Reckonings, chapbook. Her work was named Best of Poetry for the 2024 Geminga Prize and won the 2023 Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Prize. For Rosa Lane’s website, click here.

 

Othered [I speak]

 

Her breast is fit for pearls,

But I was not a “Diver”—

Her brow is fit for thrones

But I have not a crest.

—Emily Dickinson (J84, ll. 1–4)

 

I am wrong to start with,

to have //

 

to strop & hone the blade,

shave without a tuft //

 

to bind, bone-wrap my breasts,

they will not leave //

 

to swag my trousers & waistcoat

 

in a dark no one sees //

 

to ramrod the barrel, gun-cock, lean

a corner, the house dead-ends //

 

to hike sails, captain my ship, doldrumed

drifting nowhere windless //

 

to bypass the lungs, drop my voice

to the diaphragm, timbre gravitas //

 

to smoke my meerschaum, virile & fragrant

blending Latakia, smoke rings in solo //

 

I kerf the flesh of Adam’s apple verboten, pith

the larynx, my mouth plosive—hushed //

 

 

Dear Sir, (No. 7)

 

And They no more remember me—

Nor ever turn to tell me why—

Oh, Master, This is Misery—

—Emily Dickinson (J462, ll. 11–3)

 

Love’s stricken “why”

Is all that love can speak—

—Emily Dickinson (J1368, ll. 1–2)

 

Tell me, Sir, why I wake

with a bird in my mouth.

 

Why my heart seeks

a nest in a sparrow’s beak

when I worship want

on the tip of her wing.

 

Why when I visit Eden,

I want Eve, not Adam.

 

Why I long for doors

that cannot open.

 

Why I plant myself

in situ, move about light, yet

cannot lift my feet.

 

Why I live

more myth than element.

 

Why I fold myself

in a letter delivered elsewhere,

my address unopened

still lying on the table.

 

Why my finger inserts

the loop of a hot teacup

its curved lip sips, kisses

a future not yet.

 

Why the moon comes

to my window full bellied,

stares—why

when I reach for her, she empties,

turns sickle, leaves me

in shreds.