In The Beginning

Abstract

In The Beginning Alison Powell (bio) In The Beginning you know that saying in the beginning was the word wellthe words are too pleased with themselves liberty sayor personhood running up and down along the garden fencetrailing streamers behind them while we shout Youcan't run like this as though they are the children I meanthe word has never been what we supposed it to beto be honest the word hates our guts we worked it intoa nub so it grew wings & a little twin engine and now it'salways moving when it knows full well we need it not tomove I can't shake the feeling— if only the word loved usdidn't treat us like the dumb kid on the school bus who likesmagic now that we're big enough to hate the word rightback we pluck at it the word loves me the word lovesme not loose lips sink ships, Sally's lips sink ships butthe word is swollen with blood you know it never had anytruck with love these days it just lies down in its cagenext to plastic tubing & turns its shaved body away from us [End Page 96] Alison Powell Alison Powell's recent poetry and lyric essays can be found in A Public Space, Alaska Quarterly Review, Boston Review, Copper Nickel, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, and more, and is forthcoming in jubilat and New Ohio Review. A chapbook of her lyric essays, The Art of Perpetuation, is forthcoming in October 2020 from Black Lawrence Press. Her book of poems, On the Desire to Levitate, won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and was published by Ohio University Press in 2014. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Oakland University and lives with her husband, son, and daughter in Metro Detroit. Copyright © 2020 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents