Eleven Queer Commandments
O death bring her pity, labored ingratiate; set upon her six soft ways to die
Set upon the plain of grace groveling, knees to palm’s canyons, plucked fruit face down in the dirt
Better yet again lay the great grey rambling stonewashed and straightened, pitied, pressed into the wall
God’s name is here on the oil-stained pavement; praise him, o praise him…
Under nothing there is her, the bird, the blind woman wanting a guise gone in song
Halfway outside there are horse hooves and harboring and coughing fits from the bitch who calls herself sin
Creation calls out of the glory of god, of the glory of god’s engorging grace, given shelter, given flesh to trace with the tips of its teeth
The copper crescent night asks for water, honor, food for the fight, dead bright, left over, held over; left behind
O taste and see, pale borders; press against the emptying undercurrent of all of her within
Speak in the breath of the dead and the dying; speak the rabid tongues tied so tender round their throats
Startle alive the green glass night; crack heaven’s tired eyes wide
Swear to it the stonewashed story, congested glory grown ghostly in a garden given a name tasted and seen guarded beneath layers of the same slop spoken plainly, spoken angry, the words slipping down from the mountain; my mouth into hers
Sarah Ellis
Sarah Ellis is a chemist and graduate of Reed College who lives and writes in Massachusetts. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, #Ranger Magazine, wildscape., and Welter, among others.
Why this Knocked Taylor Out:
I mean I'm a huge fan of incorporating biblical language into a poem about queerness. This poem is doing a great job of grappling with both the love and fullness of accepting a queer identity while also keeping the potential enforced cultural guilt of being raised within a religious community alive. We see a lot of poets doing this with political language as well (think Layli Long Soldier) and every time the diction of the oppressor is used by the oppressed I think the language is allowed to become something more than a tool used to control.
And like just on a line level, the sound work and image work is incredible. The body is wrapped in detail and animal and viscera and who doesn’t love that?
Interview:
Why did you choose Team Taylor for this poem?
I love a reader who appreciates religious imagery! I also saw her quoting Charles Olson somewhere, and I’ve found his work very influential in the way I construct my own poetry.
What does this poem mean to you?
I love disordered coherence. I always say meaning is cheap but you can’t bullshit sound, and for me this poem is about the freedom of a world bound together by nothing but sound.
You described yourself as "a chemist who writes on the side" (which I love) and I'm curious about how you see STEM working within your work, or if writing is a place to escape that?
Poetry and chemistry have always felt like echoes of the same impulse to me. I think both seek to impose some kind of order on the world while marveling at the impossibility of it all, and that existential beauty finds its way into a lot of my poems. A few years ago I found myself reading from the journals of Maria Mitchell, who was a very talented 19th century astronomer, and at one point she talked about (and I’m paraphrasing here) how she would rather have written one beautiful poem than discovered any comets. I feel a kinship with that desire. There’s a special kind of wonder that comes from thinking about the world as a collection molecular motions and chemical reactions and then looking up and watching the way rain drips off of a fern on a fall afternoon.