Dear Adriene
Erin Dorney | Tolka Issue Three, January 2025
Day 3
Dear Adriene,
Female bears sleep right through birth. You say, give your little
belly a pet – you say, smear a little honey across the ribcage – but
visualise for me waking up, unaware of any sign of danger, with
sore teats and tiny eyes you can’t escape. I’ve never wanted not
to be a mother more than now, half-asleep with heat. Instead,
I claim this fusty cave, a lunar flag ‘waving’. You say, notice how
you feel, and I assure you, I’ve been trying.
Day 4
Dear Adriene,
Teach me how to talk to invisible things. How to measure
shoreline length. Focus on a steady state. How can some things
twist in my mind like morning glories? I think I am invasive.
I keep saying no but you grow into all my empty spaces. Dear
ones, how you multiply.
Day 21
Dear Adriene,
What are you waiting for? A better body, straighter teeth, a taste
for it, for him to come to me, for someone to just ask, a warmer
day, a better bathtub, the check in the mail, the mouse in the
kitchen, for someone to say it first, for a second, the bell, the
bus, my eyebrows to grow in, for any noticeable release, for
two dead beetles in the garden, regrowth after frost, for a bag
of diatomaceous earth, some lingering gnats, for dirt to clear
nail plate, for the collective good, standing in front of her but
not hugging her, for fewer people, less caring, for engine data,
propeller theory, an owl to fly out of a tree, for someone to
explain what they did to me upon waking from a surgery, for
lavender in a plastic bin with my name on it, permission to do
absolutely nothing, for thunder echoing over a lake, for clouds
indistinguishable from smoke, for more blood, for no blood, for
your voice older or at the very least sober, for a different way
of knowing, knowing the different ways of waiting, the circle
inside of a circle, the next chip in my tooth, for my favorite
porn clip, for suckers on the tomato plants, cars that sound
like rushing water, a way to take back touch, for the squash to
turn tan uniformly, for the routine to settle in, for a lie that’s
good enough to tell myself, the third of any two things I’ve
ever found, for a pair of large pine cones, for a red rotary phone,
two matchbooks containing original matches, for twenty-four
pages of results, the storm surge, for the strength to say it out
loud, for the shapes of poems as poems themselves, for a juicy
titbit, lyrical honesty, a matching set of sheds dropped in the
same place, for snapping turtle season, for a cold scent, for
dirt and purpose, for absorption and collecting, for a formal
encounter, confidence in the object from a distance, for the
fossilised air of second chances, for water to rush through
radiator pipes, for the book that is the notes on the book, for a
private place to piss, for the night hunter, for a thaw that hangs
around, for stands of maple whips, an antidote to shame, for
just one loving gesture.
Day 24
Dear Adriene,
I carried it on my tongue to different parts of the yard like
some bee. All day I felt it in the back of my throat, a whistle.
My dog will eat anything I hand him, but he won’t take this
from my lips. I call this smoothing the heart forward. I call this
an informal survey. I only listen to the radio when it arrives
in languages I do not understand. I saw a limp seagull vomit,
tangled in seaweed, and you weren’t even there. Falling on its
face like a deadrise, just another useless knot. Let gravity do
the work. Did you know most pollen carries a small amount of
electrostatic charge? I feel it on my brow, my lips, between the
small hairs packed closely together on my legs.
Day 27
Dear Adriene,
I’ll tell you a secret – water brings me things. Did you know that
glass can take one hundred years to weather? Each wave a rock,
pebble tumbled soft, fossil at my feet. You say, claw through
the hands, so I do, each morning desperate to see if a piece of
the moon has finally come. When it rains the garden garbage
rises – undead. Rusted nails, broken bulbs, a button, one cent,
they reverse-sift themselves up into my palms. Fingertips kiss
the earth, as I drag trash away from whatever good is growing.
Lately I’ve licked so many things off leaves – a globe of pollen,
a bead of wetness in which I saw the world. Make a choice, make
a choice, make a choice.
Erin Dorney is a conceptual poet and artist based in upstate New York. She is the author of Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering (forthcoming from Autofocus Books in March 2025), The Usual Arteries (Illuminated Press), Grating, Darling, Full of Dirt (Common Meter Press), I Am Not Famous Anymore: Poems After Shia LaBeouf (Mason Jar Press), and many zines and artist’s books.
‘Dear Adriene’ was first published in Issue Three of Tolka (May 2022). You can subscribe to Tolka for a year for €22.
