In the Garden Where the Gorgons Live by Danie Shokoohi
By Danie Shokoohi on November 27, 2018 in Poetry
Image by Khanya, The Designer
Winner of the Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2018 Poetry Category
and then i step outside my body the way you leave a house when someone is breaking in
and in the garden where the gorgons live, the topiary is singing
and he says, that didn’t hurt you
and my skin slices easy like a persimmon, yes, bruises
like a plum, yes, everything
inside me is soft and bloody, yes,
it hurt me
and he calls this, i love you
and in the garden where the gorgons live, the stone trees are singing
he loves you he loves you
he will slit your skin and he will live inside you
he will build a birdhouse of your finger bones
and he says,
i love you
and he says,
why can’t you just let me love you
and he says,
shut up and lay still while i love you
and then i held pain in both palms like berries and pain was bright and red
and tasted like holly
and in the garden where the gorgons live, it is always winter
i am scrubbing the skin off my softness
sandstone tongue, basalt stomach, agate webbing of my fingers
i will not apologize for each thing i have turned to stone inside me, not
yet, and never
again
–
Danie Shokoohi is a fiction candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison MFA program. Her fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have been previously published in Plain China Press, Vassar Review, Occulum, Hypertrophic Literary, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. She was one the winners of the 2017 Ellis Review New Colossus Award. She is the press editor of Half Mystic Press.
