Where the Ache Is

In jacket sleeves knotted about my waist.
With crumpled papers in boxes.
In the market, amid grains.
In drawers of surgical tools.
Cereal boxes, televisions.
In regulations, between pages.
Between your toes. Under cuticles.
In the language of dogs.
Pinched in shoelace tangles.
At the bottom of the meat case.
Sliding down mountains.
Beside shards. Beside blueberries.
Within.
Incisors.
In building vents, harbors.
The eternal jaw of the world, grinding.

The large fist of No
and how everything falls,
papers, hopes, a gavel.
Suffocate. And then
what rises: ribs
with breath intake,
winter plantings,
solitude like bread.

Ruth Goring’s poetry collections are The Authority of Hunger (forthcoming), Soap Is Political, and Yellow Doors; she has also written Dearworthy: Little Meditations on the Revelations of Julian of Norwich, several picture books, and, with photographer Michael Bracey, Caras lindas de Colombia / Beautiful Faces of Colombia. Ruth makes visual art, translates Spanish-English, gardens with native plants, and does solidarity work