Damian Rogers was born and raised in suburban Detroit. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a graduate degree from the Bennington Writing Seminars in Bennington, Vermont. Her first book Paper Radio was published by ECW Press in 2009. Her poems have appeared in Brick Magazine, The Walrus, Salt Hill, MoonLit, and This Magazine. She lives in Toronto.
REDBIRD
It's the middle of the night.
I've set the house on fire
with those matches I love,
the ones in the kitchen
with the red bird on the box.
Allumettes qui s'allument partout.
Take care: may ignite if box is
dropped, shaken, or crushed.
This same bird flies through
a tattoo on your arm.
The house is burning down
and I am thinking of boats.
You hate the matches, the smell
of bent, black spoons.
I light one and it falls to the floor.
Another and another. Take care.
I don't know what to save
from this place, sailing from wall
to wall, room to room, smoking.
You are not here. You are rain
battering against some window.
I don't know what to save.
The red bird eats everything in sight.
CHARITY
I see your body buried
under fifteen yards of cotton,
arms slight as snakes.
You don't eat. You pass out pie,
each plate a punch card.
You're never not working.
You long to lift off the ground
but I've tracked your prints
in the dust behind the barn.
I trail your movements, less like
a shadow, more like a man.
I stand in your wake, close as I can.
At night I dream how your hip
would melt like a snowbank
under the heat of my hand.
DREAM OF THE LAST SHAKER
We stream into the meetinghouse
through two doors
like twin cords
in the same braid.
I love the men,
all of them
lined up like
God's long finger.
The sun attends everything
equally: the wood, the bend
of her white muslin sleeve,
the outstretched arm of the apocalypse.
Take hold of my shoulder.
Shake me awake.