by Eléna Rivera
I’ve had enough of new names, new ways of trying to stop time,
it just creates more sleet in the steep curves of my pale existence,
of ways to prod and avoid the emotions that rock the course of
my continuance, which is entirely filled with paper birch trees—
during the short window available, my entity responds to anything
with the word “paper,” gets me mapping the “just was” page.
I wanted to have deeper words about the Caribou, new designations
that would help me “see,” but writing is always a walk in the dark,
dependent on the will of my body, including that variable, the brain.
If I had soft velvet horns and warming fur I might be okay with my
scattered disposition, instead I take umbrage with the time allotted—
the image of the glam reindeer in the cartoon I saw as a child, and
my fear of extinction in the future. What I learned then as we shifted
from one school to another, was the motto “adapt or die,” isn’t that
true of all of us? Especially for those stuck in migration patterns?
I thought it would change once I became an adult, could control my
own movements. I took stock of the temperature, tried to be kind.
The voyage can be one into lower realms, but that’s one of choice.
I want to excuse myself all the time and make adjustments, change.
I got stuck in the branches of the forest and had no herd to guide me.
I got here, for now, to a desk and typing—the entity with my name never
imagined months in the silence of a temporary haven. Most of the time
I look back at what can be culled so that I can mine it on paper or
communicate with you. From the first I wanted to please and repair
the scar, wanted her to see me, but the chaos around the musical
was full of wild animals and shadows. My body will evolve to cope,
or just end up in trampled grass. Remind me of where I want to go.
Oh yes, those northern landscapes where we won’t be dying of thirst.
Eléna Rivera’s poetry collections are Arrangements (Aquifer 2022), Epic Series (Shearsman, 2020), and Scaffolding (Princeton University Press, 2017). Poems also appeared in Bathhouse, Denver Quarterly, Three Fold, Golden Handcuffs, VOLT, the Joan Mitchell Foundation website, and Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation (University of Minnesota Press 2025). She’s a recipient of an NEA grant and poetry fellowships from MacDowell and Djerassi.
This poem previously appeared in Golden Handcuffs.