Emily Borgmann
Emily Borgmann is a poet, essayist, and writing educator in Omaha, Nebraska. They are the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Champion of Youth advocacy award from Youth Emergency Services, and recipient of a Nebraska Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature. They are a creative writing instructor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where they also serve as Medical Humanities Faculty and teach in the TRAC Program and the Thompson Learning Community. Emily’s poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Waxwing, Copper Nickel, The Laurel Review, Green Mountains Review, Salamander, and Alligator Juniper.
Why This Field
Instead of sleeping next to you in nightrooms, I leave. Next to you, I sliver.
We should demand more of each other. If there was time to consider
what to do, since your logic called for this picnic, flannel blankets,
cocoa in a plaid thermos—why aren’t you in love with these trees?
You could have stood behind me, swayed hips with mine
like these golden leaves suede each other, but barely, and if you’d told me
how you wanted to brush against the cheek of a maple, really give it
something to talk about—if you’d confessed to the ever-dying bark
that you are the one, longlast arrived to kickblaze it Christmas, told how
your legos crackled like firewood preparing for this since kindergarten—
if you’d asked, Maple, could I split your thighs? Can we slowburn
syrupy babies together? After our country drive to see the leaves,
if you’d hushed the world down to your sighs clouding the air,
stood naked exhaling sawdust, I would’ve rent my clothes, wailed
a goddamn bible scene, had you whispered in my ear your affair
with the branches, if you’d come restless to this field like your fingers
first slip-lifted scratchy sweater wool to find—
I Didn’t Know My Body
If I’d been able to look on my plain form sooner,
I wouldn’t shock at the scars that seam me now.
I’m going to be okay (always was). Standing
in front of the full-length mirror
hung on the back wall of my closet, my silvery-thin
skin fires across time at me, dusk-hour luminous
now, and my closet’s waving shirtsleeves, scarves.
They shadow my torso, so many arms.
The longing chokes me, even shadows ask to hold me,
and who knew I was so light-full, a Christmas tree,
my untrained eyes flashing at the pointy top?
Why the Leaves
You keep burning down the trees—Curator of What?
What might you love-prove? That we’ll stand forever,
votives in this field, sky a trampoline flinging our questions
back at us when we look up, lost, asking what to do
with these bodies unloved? You thought you could bring me to this
forest and burn down the trees as a romantic gesture?
All serious, you ask, Once every factor in the laboratory
wilderness has been stabilized, will you be
mine forever? That’s not my promise to give, we’re just two
cold fools thudding dirt, we can’t hold the bewilderness.