I Explain the Dark Center by Lindsay Illich
Editorial intern Brian Czyzyk on today's bonus poem: Lindsay Illich’s “I Explain the Dark Center” carries an earthy sensuality and juxtaposes a curious combination of images: a bathtub, tomatoes, and volcanic rock, as a collage of heartbreak. Loss paints the narrator’s Earth blue with “warm sorrow,” and stone-like hips are worn down to bone within Illich’s tight and evocative lines.
I Explain the Dark Center
It started with your eyes
calling from the tub to come
get me, bring me your warm
sorrow. The part of losing you
I can’t get over is how you grow
despite my not watering you:
I threw seeds out the window
and this year I pick all the tomatoes
I want. You said, it’s the humidity.
Yes, I approve the antediluvian.
No rain but everywhere lush
the Earth found blue.
Your hip crests, a caldera of pumice
we rubbed and rubbed like worry
until we were worn down
to the bone.
Lindsay Illich's first book, rile & heave, won the Texas Review Press Breakout Prize in Poetry.