"The Once and Future Storyteller" by Dia Calhoun

The Once and Future Storyteller

When I was five and a tale of sunlight
I slept in summer grass, boneless,
mouth strawberry blurred.
I never felt the hard ground
never knew myself animal
scribbled on a blowing page.

Now I am old and a spell of midnight
a thousand nights on a thousand mattresses
don't quiet the fire in the bones.
I abandon old tales too small to keep me alive now
like Scheherazade ripened
into an old princess who always has to pee,
relieved of the narratives of the sun.

Outside my window
old trees turn feral in the moonlight,
drag the waning moon
to the black rose of my mouth.

I sink my teeth
deep
into the shining bone of the moon,
at last, knowing myself animal
shout poetry, elegy, prophecy,
psalm, sutra, alleluia—
inscribe revelations on rock
become human at last.

Dia Calhoun

Dia Calhoun is the author of seven young adult novels, including two verse novels, After the River the Sun and Eva of the Farm (Atheneum, 2013, 2012). She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature. Her poems have appeared in And Blue Will Rise Over Yellow: An International Poetry Anthology for Ukraine; The EcoTheo Review; MORIA Literary Magazine; and Writers Resist. An article on poetry craft, co-authored with Deborah Bacharach, is forthcoming in the Writer's Chronicle. Calhoun co-founded readergirlz, recipient of The National Book Foundation Innovations in Reading Prize, and has taught at Seattle University, Stony Brook University, and The Cornish College. More at diacalhoun.com.

Headshot: Shawn Zink

Photo Credit: Staff