Two Poems

by Laura Mota

the cows are benevolent and full of flies

the cows are benevolent and full of flies.
wilderness needs to make its case against nature romanticization.
I tell the cows that my partner’s kisses taste like quick disapprovals. 
they moo to me and I thank them for their compassion.
I head back to the cabin, dancing my ridiculous anti-mosquito urban steps.
the cows accompany me until the fence retains them.

I pick wild flowers to give to my partner.
I pinch them with my nails. maliciously, the flowers ask:
Do you think we’re enough to fill your lack?
“No… You’re not enough but you’re not a filling, 
you’re a peace offering.”
I give them a compact smile. I haven’t been crying.

the sun appears. I haven’t seen the cows under direct sunlight.
I go back. they moo.
their hazelnut fur reflects the sun. I would love to hug them,
feel their warmth, but I can’t stay still for a conversation.
it’s marked on my skin: I’m an event for flies and mosquitoes.
I head to the cabin. again, ridiculously urban.

inside, I hesitantly walk towards my napping lover.
he opens his eyes and asks “So how was it?”
I reply the first thing that comes to mind, “Too many insects.”
I drop the flowers beside his head
and I know my action lacked a proper apology.
“For me?”

I don’t look at him but I say yes.
he goes back to his nap. I squeeze a tube of after bite.
the flowers were untouched and therefore
they were right in their malice.
I put the flowers on a wine glass,
the daisy seems to have more backbone than me.

I stare at my lover.
earlier, he had said he was tired: “Laura, I’m tired.”
of course I heard “Laura, I’m tired of you.”
to which I replied promptly: “okay, I’m going to see the cows.”
I needed company while I meditated
on how rational thoughts feel like a betrayal to life long habits,
the self loathing tradition.

the flowers point at a lack that scratches my existence
it empties me between my chest and my pelvis.
daily, my belly button reminds me that I am drilled.
from there I’ve lost my father, my country, my language.
all that is available are the chunks of vocabulary too big to escape me.
like I love you, the shortcut I use to describe miracles to the napper.

is a miracle a miracle if it is a continuous event?
or does it become a piece of normality?
can it be a miracle if it goes unnoticed?
the flowers giggle, one says you and your miracles aim at transparent
and settle on invisible. love me or love me not,
daisies take no bullshit. 

miracles don’t escape flowers, they have leaves and roots instead of belly buttons.
meanwhile, I worry that one day my lover’s ears will grow tired,
and his skin will receive my carinhos with dullness.
I’ll still search for something to represent the miracle, but I’ll come short.
I’ll be heard as a child: naive or a liar.
I should have jumped the fence and hugged the cows.

I cover all my itches with transparent goo and I am relieved.
I take the mocking flowers by their necks and decide to trash them.
from the sofa, my lover asks what I am doing.
”I’m putting them in freshwater.”
the flowers giggle softly.
recently awake, he thinks that the laughter was mine. he giggles back.
distraction! there’s a mosquito beside my right ear.

Newborn and Dead Walk Home

realistic time

rocks twirling with the retraction of the waves
a fizzy sound for the freezing water under the warm sun
heat invites the landscape to dance
the clouds look like birds escaping to the south
but they are droplets, no warmblood or feathers
so they travel north.

I imagine a drawing to accompany the speed of the ocean:

_____looplooplooploop_looploop__looploop_______loop_______

the drawing fails in self-explanation.
a realistic interpretation of the ocean involves technique
and a period longer than the crash of the waves
realism would portray waves that have never been
but they are nonetheless children of an experience of this ocean.

***

The Block

The Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli says that whenever we perceive Past and Future as different, the split is caused by heat exchange. He argues that our perception of time is illusory. If we had a more refined sensibility of time, we would understand it as a single block.

Past, Present, and Future undivided.

As I write, the crows sing the start of the rain, and I know I must go home. If time is a block, it is raining and sunny and freezing and warm at this park. But I can only position Myself in the Now where the rain is just across the corner. Now is a location of multiple identities, just like Here.

I is as Indexical as Now, Here, and Tomorrow. I-Today and I-Yesterday are contained in the vessel of My Body. I am newborn and dead as I walk home, passing through jasmine plants that are both flourishing scent and winterly inexistence.

***

Call

“Você ainda não jantou?!”
(You haven't had dinner yet?)

Grandma would ask me at least once a week, arching her eyebrows when I reminded her that to me it was only 3 p.m. Moving from São Paulo to BC meant I had to explain over and over to her the four hours difference that separated us. She pouted in video calls:

“Eu fico achando que você vive mais do que eu.”
(I get the impression that you live more than me.)

I smiled at her complaint. I loved entertaining the thought that she spoke with me from the future, and I replied from the past. Or that time slowed down for me in the Northern Hemisphere.

My grandma refused the idea of a common Now. Her now and my now were so distant from each other, we lost their meaning in the space between our bodies. “Now” felt deceiving and isolating.

The incongruence of Nows reminds me that as a child, I had the certainty that the thirty minutes of wait between eating and swimming were two hours in a slow-moving clock controlled by my grandma.

Now, a year feels short. A popular explanation is that as an adult, I unconsciously compare a year with the rest of my life, and conclude that a year is not so long. Time starts passing fast until it doesn't pass at all. And we are finally one with the block of time, cemented in its unity.

---

ABOUT THE CREATOR

Laura Mota is a Taiwanese-Brazilian writer, photographer, and shameless experimentalist in other mediums based in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. Her poetry has been featured at PRISM International, High Shelf, Soliloquies Anthology, and elsewhere. Laura also writes personal essays, and her work has been published by Held Magazine and is forthcoming in Also Cool Magazine. Keep in touch through @imnofiction on Instagram.

---