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“Apology

I didn't mean to say so much to you.
I should have thought to let the evening end
by looking at the stars subdued

into their antique blue and alabaster hues.
Such looking would have fit with my intent.
I didn't mean to speak that way to you.

If I could take it back, I'd take it, undo
it, and replace it with the things I meant
to give—not what I let slip (it's true)

like any pristine star of ornamental hue.
I do not always do what I intend.
I didn't mean to say so much to you.

It slipped before I saw, before I knew.
Or do we always do what we intend?
Perhaps it's true and all along I knew

what I was saying—but how I wanted you.
I should have thought to let the evening end.
The placid stars seemed filled and then subdued
by what I did and did not want to do.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“In Tennessee I Found a Firefly"

Flashing in the grass; the mouth of a spider clung
to the dark of it: the legs of the spider
held the tucked wings close,
held the abdomen still in the midst of calling
with thrusts of phosphorescent light�

When I am tired of being human, I try to remember
the two stuck together like burrs. I try to place them
central in my mind where everything else must
surround them, must see the burr and the barb of them.
There is courtship, and there is hunger. I suppose
there are grips from which even angels cannot fly.
Even imagined ones. Luciferin, luciferase.
When I am tired of only touching,
I have my mouth to try to tell you
what, in your arms, is not erased.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“Cecilia plays a harp and sings "The angels are bitches,
the gods are slutsâ€�&°ù»å±ç³Ü´Ç;
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“People say you forget about death, but you don't.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“God, throw me a line.
The drowning takes too long.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“Via Negativa

Sometimes it's too hard with words or dark or silence.
Tonight I want a prayer of high-rouged cheekbones
and light: a litany of back-lit figures,
lithe and slim, draped in fabrics soft and wrinkleless and pale
as onion slivers. Figures that won't stumble or cough:
sleek kid-gloved Astaires who'll lift
ladies with glamorous sweeps in their hair�
They'll bubble and glitter like champagne.
They'll whisper and lean and waltz and wink effortlessly
as figurines twirling in music boxes, as skaters in their dreams.

And the prayer will not be crowded.
You'll hear each click of staccato heel
echo through the glassy ballrooms—too few shimmering skirts;
the prayer will seem to ache
for more. But the prayer will not ache.
When we enter, its chandeliers and skies
will blush with pleasure. Inside
we will be weightless, and our goodness will not matter
in a prayer so light, so empty it will float.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“I suppose
there are grips from which even angels cannot fly.
Even imagined ones.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“There is courtship, and there is hunger.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“Why else would two people shut
their green blinds and half
fall into each other?”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“They pick and play me, as if I were made for them.

What was I made for, then?”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“I have only to touch you to be suddenly lifted
into the cradle of your arms, to surrender completely . . . .”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“Raw lust for romanceâ€�&°ù»å±ç³Ü´Ç;
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“I said no—and then it was abuzz inside me,
all wings, restlessâ€�&°ù»å±ç³Ü´Ç;
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“What if they didn't know how to feel,
not even how they were supposed to feel.

Imagine: there would be no mercy in them.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“What if the inanimate were forced into motion?”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“Who has waited longest for this kiss?”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“The Technique of the Lifelike

I had imagined death thrillingly:
my arms held behind to restrain their frivolous occasions,
the whole of me bending
like a tall yellow lily before you.

Yet set see how my hands go on with their thoughts.
See how I fold and fold my handkerchief.

I am not a great lady.
I don't swoon with love.

My stricken, I cannot render you as you
move quickly toward your skillful execution,
your shoulders tossing their indifference to the dark,
your face overlaid with stage effects.
You grow irresistibly small. Your hands and feet expire.
This is where sculpture also fails, this is where I turn
wholly unattached and without debt.

What is the use of crowning you in glory?

Now my fingers make bowls for rain: in your honor: hope for nothing.
We knew our disposition long ago.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“In this way

the changes I want I don't have
to suffer.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“You're the head injury I've always longed for,
what I call thinking.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“Literature is falling away.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“Everything he remembers is there,
but then, he can't remember.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“It's not what he was promised.
The land looks strange, unearthly strange
and unforgivable.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“Approaching Elegy

It's hard to believe you are dying: like looking
at a Jamesian scene, skipping past happiness
to a garden bench beyond the trees. You fill the form
of heroine: you sit in your black dress, too tired to imagine
the rest of yourself.
An old suitor appears, grabs you possibly

too forcefully by the wrists (he is still impossibly
in love�). You disengage your wrists. He leans forward, looks
into your eyes, which you close—as if you were all by yourself.
He moves closer, talking very fast about happiness.
He places his cloak on your shoulders, imagines
he'll rescue you. Around you, forms

grow darker: house, branch, hydrangea. Above you, freckled
expanses of leaves form
the beginnings of barbed, lopsided shrouds—a possible
solace. If only his kiss could please you, I wouldn't need to imagine
past the clean architecture of the story. And perhaps it is wrong to look
past that. Wrong to ask about happiness.
Past midnight, he continues to offer himself.

Before, he had offered aimless passion, but now (you see it for yourself)
he has an idea: he points into the darkness. He is grave, formal.
The dark has swallowed the long shadows of the oaks (though not
your unhappiness)
—and it is about to swallow you. Soon, it will no longer be possible
(there is just one more page to turn) for me to look
through your eyes, so I would like to imagine

for you: something past tragedy. Just as I would like to imagine
that we are not in danger, that we have selves
more solid than stars, that we are safe in the pages of books we can
reopen to look
at each other. Except that we are not women formed
of words, but of impossible
longings. What was it that you wanted besides happiness?

You are dying. I have no ideas about happiness
and no patience to imagine
it possible.
Soon you will not be the heroine; you will not be yourself.
And it's not that you've lost the formula; your form
is losing you. Look

at how brave you are: I imagined the great point was to be happy,
as happy as possible
with the quick forms that imagine us—but the last time I looked
there you were—distant and bright in the not so blue darkness,
imagining yourself.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“The sky is measled with stars.
There was a soul, a god, too, that I meant
to concoct.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“as if I am an instrument he is tuning,
or as if (adjusting his mask) he is adjusting an instrument
to look through meâ€�&°ù»å±ç³Ü´Ç;
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“I return to tracing

the line. It's not unlike the way
I trace myself back to myself
after returning from spaces that have
no place in me. Not unlike the way

I trace over moments with you when you
are no one I recognize.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“yes,
I think you want emptiness
also, let's have it.”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“to have given into the quiet . . .
(while seduction was still a form of disappointment).”
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“It would have been easier to give in
to the shape assigned him, not to have summoned
the cryâ€�&°ù»å±ç³Ü´Ç;
― Mary Szybist, Granted

“Why the sudden anguish (where I rush to him),
the swelling in music?”
― Mary Szybist, Granted