Audrey Gidman is a queer poet living in Maine. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in The Night Heron Barks, Luna Luna, Birdcoat Quarterly, Volume Poetry, The Inflectionist Review, The West Review, The Shore and elsewhere. She serves as assistant poetry editor for Gigantic Sequins and an editor for Newfound's Emerging Poets Chapbook Series. Her chapbook, body psalms, winner of the Elyse Wolf Prize, is forthcoming from Slate Roof Press.
SCOLIOSIS (OR, NOTES ON SUFFERING)
I’ve tried to write praise poems
for a spine that spits me out bent
each morning, tilted
a little more toward the sun, tight
hips, muscles buckling, every bone, pelvis
a bowl of hot
water, ache & unanswered prayers & the poems
never come out with flowers
in them or rain, never
birds or bells, love
or thank you, they always
seem to weep, they shrug, put grief
back on the shelf like an empty jar & dust
the same tired edges, never worth
the work of making beautiful but maybe
this poem
can be about
water & maybe this poem
can be
about love & maybe
this poem
can have flowers in it
too—
PSALM IN THE FIELD AT DUSK (OR, NOTES ON WALKING AWAY)
O God make me discerning
Make me disciplined
Make my breath stay in my lungs
when I ask it to
Make me strong in the knees
when he speaks
When he winks & wrings
his hands
God make me whole
unto myself
Make me braver
Make it impossible
to love a man
more than I love myself
Make him good
God please
make him good
somewhere else
THIS COULD HAVE BEEN AN AUBADE
if I had moved gently. If
sheets pressed into the cursive
l of your shoulder. If I had folded into
your crooked arm.
If I’d tiptoed to the kitchen
to find water, not slip
through the back door.
If I’d tried to call.
& when I saw you on the sidewalk
later & looked
you in the eye, if I hadn’t
kept walking. If I’d remembered
the kiss you left
at the crest of my cheek, not
the chickadee
outside your window
dying.
NOTES ON TREES
the leaves
are spackled
across fields
& cracked
sidewalks
& bird-
shit-speckled
hoods of cars
in church
parking lots,
bleeding split
crimson pinks
& marooned
yellows up
into the small
wrists of
themselves—
NOTES ON SHAME
shame on you for thinking you are not made of poems girl shame on you for thinking you are not made of poems girl shame on you for thinking you are not made of shame on you for thinking you are not made of girl you are thinking you are not you are not made of shame on you for thinking you are poems girl shame you are not made of poems girl shame you are not made of shame on you for thinking you are girl you are not made of girl you are not made of poems you are not made of shame on you for thinking you are not made of shame on you for thinking you are not made of shame on you for being made of sh—