Poem: Christina Hutchins

Ta da! My final posting of nominees for this year's Lambda Literary award for lesbian poetry collections is (and remember, I posted in random order, the order beloved by random bloggers everywhere) The Stranger Dissolves, by Christina Hutchins (Sixteen Rivers Press).

As is the case with the other nominees, Hutchins is a seasoned poet. On the list of Things You Can Tell Your Parents About Your New Girlfriend: she has won the Villa Montalvo Poetry Prize, received two Barbara Deming Awards, and is the first Poet Laureate of Albany, California. She teaches at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.

Here, from Missouri Review is "Into your pocket."  You might wander over to Switchback for more beauty and elegance.

Into your pocket

I have slid a bright morning before rain.
Tonight’s concerto is folded into thousands
of paper cranes; their wings were trees, rollicking
restless in the sun. Here’s a loose,
black thread pulled from my hem, tangled

to a tiny bundle between my fingers & thumb.
Kelp strands roiled back & forth in the surf
& deposited at high tide, the lost chains
of underseas are knotted, left along the beach.
Here is the warmth of my stride, left in a heap

on a rug beside the bed, blue jeans shed
in the shapes of my legs. I, too, have held
the shape of an absence. Quiet in the auditorium.
Who is that, laughing at the back of the room?
Here we are again, leaning against the door,

my way to you disclosed by two tongues
spending a sweet moment. The self I become
& the self you become are celestial bodies
entered into, one by another. Tender
release, a wet palate tasting its small

flourishes, my love is for taking along.
Like you, I swim a rising, astral surge.
If we are anchored by every spent moment,
the anchors are already rusted to dust
& these chains no heavier than light.

by Christina Hutchins, from The Missouri Review, 2010