Nadine Klassen
Sixteen Songs for the Catbird
The night after your birthday, I dreamt I visited you in Colorado,
which was a field in New York City, wet
as a mountain’s top, after a storm had opened
& ran across the crowds of seven
lives we had brought here -
everyone we have been, everyone
we gave to a future. Everyone we are
because of how our mothers have loved us.
& I forgot her face,
I bit into my own voice - hungry for myself.
If you walked down all of the streets of New York,
it would take a little over one hundred days,
& you’d arrive again & again at the little finger
of time & ask for one more way
to know yourself. Cut Colorado’s mountains with a swiss pocket
knife into Switzerland six times one night & eat
their one thousand peaks by dawn.
Back in your apartment, which was a Loft
in Midtown Manhattan,
your love was lying in their jeans and t-shirt
in a puddle of Cepheus’ light, pouring
through the skylights in the middle of the kitchen,
just feeling the light in my body being held by itself.
& even though I had prepared
for it until it had become aftercare,
I still wore my mother’s outfit, her rings & makeup.
& I know what I took that plane for, why I came to Colorado
in midnight’s baffle.
Why I tied my sheets in knots & hung them
into your front door: to climb those high shelves
in your kitchen, a catbird in my hands, an olive branch
of my own hair & jump into the flood.
which was a field in New York City, wet
as a mountain’s top, after a storm had opened
& ran across the crowds of seven
lives we had brought here -
everyone we have been, everyone
we gave to a future. Everyone we are
because of how our mothers have loved us.
& I forgot her face,
I bit into my own voice - hungry for myself.
If you walked down all of the streets of New York,
it would take a little over one hundred days,
& you’d arrive again & again at the little finger
of time & ask for one more way
to know yourself. Cut Colorado’s mountains with a swiss pocket
knife into Switzerland six times one night & eat
their one thousand peaks by dawn.
Back in your apartment, which was a Loft
in Midtown Manhattan,
your love was lying in their jeans and t-shirt
in a puddle of Cepheus’ light, pouring
through the skylights in the middle of the kitchen,
just feeling the light in my body being held by itself.
& even though I had prepared
for it until it had become aftercare,
I still wore my mother’s outfit, her rings & makeup.
& I know what I took that plane for, why I came to Colorado
in midnight’s baffle.
Why I tied my sheets in knots & hung them
into your front door: to climb those high shelves
in your kitchen, a catbird in my hands, an olive branch
of my own hair & jump into the flood.
Biography
photography by Sofie Kohaupt
|
Nadine Klassen (she/her) is a German poet, whose work focuses on mental health, identity and relationships. It has been published by Anti-Heroin Chic, Olney, Sky Island Journal and others. She lives in her hometown with her boyfriend and their dog. Find her on Instagram: @nadineklassen.writer
|
