Chelsea Dingman

Tenderness

May I not disappear inside the loss

May you appear

May proof be the too-close world as it enters the ear

May any of us wake
            free from hard grasses that crawl out of our shadows

May this wilderness of unknowing not be a death

May our silence exist only as resistance

May we understand what broke
beneath the sink was a whole life

May deer carcasses & shell casings & fields that used to be
forests mean once
we were something held

May accidents of light be haunted by aviaries

May the war in this afterward be want

May I not want 

May the hours be without, as you are without
pain now

May you speak as rain 

May you
teach me to belong to the sound

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Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, won the National Poetry Series (UGA Press, 2017). Her second book, through a small ghost, won The Georgia Poetry Prize (UGA Press, 2020). Her third collection, I, Divided, is forthcoming from LSU Press in the fall of 2023. She is also the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Alberta. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.