Nicole Rollender
Natsumi — Summer Life | Cindy Rinne
Sky Burial
In Tibet, the deceased is dismembered by a rogyapa, or body breaker,
and left outside to be consumed by birds.
The songs of whales
through palm
floating rice
trees gathering letters
wife, how she
flowers, breathes
reliving me. How she
of water. Monks
back into who made
juniper smoke lullaby
Bone-breakers draw
its stories, eat dismember.
home, sky dancers
pulp, bone flour
black wings raised
tendon shadow
words I said to far-
a friend still
how in sky
gather return
corn tassel herd
two lovers walking
its landscape lonely
as this vanishing
dream my breaking
bones pounded,
boat over snow,
about Buddha’s
holds cremated
wing-sweet moths
understands loss
curl my body
the world, cloth white
before disassemble.
my body, quartering
To understand no
dissolve me, flesh
yak milk on stones
claws in my belly
hands smelling prayer
away cherry blossoms
coming over hills
my remnants wind,
as mare hoof
of buffalo
a churchyard
for my voice
holds us together.
Fire Burial
In Bali, the dead are buried and then unearthed to be burned,
since fire is the vehicle to the next life.
The last thing I held
roots lanterning
body flames rib-rooted
horses, my mingle
braided hair, stomach’s
bones, eye, bracelets
seeds and hay, teeth’s
remembering first
when hunger shoved
food in our mouths,
of desire. After
our wreckage,
in mangos. Babies
mothers searching
remember our fig-
off teeth, our bones’
My wrists loosen
me onto the pyre.
for this body
sent old men
healed grief
to be lifted back
into being useful
Let buried be
Let ignited be
cicadas singing
Give glory
that have taken
arriving in bone
was a song’s salt
uproot, earth-bitter
hooves of far winter
with dead wives’
open throat, finger
on pelvis, rice spills,
moon dreams of dogs
they were wolves,
a grieving season’s
hiding evidence
husbands dig up
they lay with us
crawl over dead
for nipples. They’ll
-dried lips smiling
loud knocking.
as thin men lift
What it means
that suckled babies
crying into eternity
by rocking
how women heal
dirt to sleep.
burn flowers up.
light speaking
liven firehairs.
these darkened scars
my whole death
shine before break.
Predator Burial
The nomadic Massai of East Africa don’t believe in an afterlife.
Livers float in neck bones
Carry persimmon seeds throatward
Feed wives flesh and grass
Light is stags free of sleeping
Caribou shoulder fire-cracked
Dismember anemones
He submerged me here to open
Hold shame under drowning
Burn the string of teeth
Deluge is black lines on women’s palms
Our bodies slide in wild mustard
Handfuls of frogs eat stars
Fractured water guides the hunt
The way he laid my bones
Bright marrow in horns
“I miss your wrists jangling”
Flowers dim the eggshell womb
The birth body is a box
Imagine the mud stench
I hunt the air river
There is light
There is light no more there
is light no more in bones
wandering earthward
heart falling off the bone
BIO
NICOLE ROLLENDER is a southern New Jersey-based poet. She’s assistant poetry editor at Minerva Rising Literary Journal and editor of Stitches. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Journal, Radar Poetry, Salt Hill Journal, THRUSH Poetry Journal, and other journals, along with the Best New Poets anthology. She’s the author of the poetry chapbooks Absence of Stars (dancing girl press), Little Deaths (ELJ Publications) and Arrangement of Desire. Her chapbook, Bone of My Bone, is a winning manuscript in Blood Pudding Press’s 2015 Chapbook Contest, and is forthcoming later this year. She is the recipient of poetry prizes from CALYX Journal, Ruminate Magazine and Princemere Journal. Find her online at www.nicolerollender.com.