H G Dierdorff

At a point in the field

after Queer Phenomenology by Sara Ahmed

It’s never so much
about the view as
the rhythm, the desire
lines my repeated
actions wear through
the grass. Again, i fuck
my friend. Vector of
dissent, of my body
drawn across the field
by the warm scent
of petal, always this
inflorescence just beyond
my grasp—what’s available
here, in the sphere where
i diverge? Subject
turning toward (not
object, not direct
but slant) this light,
this grove, these needles
crushed. i never asked
for the field, the path,
the pollen interstitial,
my porousness absolute.
How open can you
remain? the grasses ask.
Phenomenology of spring:
each day lengthens,
my body & her
unmapped horizons.

ii.

When i say i never
asked, i mean i
reached, i stuffed birch
blossoms in my mouth
until stars & static
pricked my cheeks.
Anaphylaxis another form
of expansion, vessels
dilating into dizzying
loss. Cause of quickening:
affinity between molecule
& protein. In rooms
i find myself turning from
& towards. Cause of
turning: i’ve turned before.
My body sends coded
letters to herself, a chemical
alphabet, is & not
a twisted knot
beneath, within. Queer
from the Indo-European
to twist. Double helix
spiraling around itself
in each nucleus. (Which
species, which genus)
Google that. Google
diagnosis for: all organs
in an uproar. Google
comphet. Google tongue
tingling. Delete delete.
Clear all history. i tell
myself the learned
word: questioning.

iii.

Blue clouds over blue
hills over Main St:
this second horizon we
ascended last night,
sirens, a sweep of
headlights through her
blinds. At the bakery
i crack eggs into a sieve,
break two shells open
at once—the practiced
pulling apart between
forefinger and thumb.
An effect of work: this
ease like the ease of
letting a man make love
to me. How the mind
directs the body, forces
the parting. i do &
do not believe this
simile. i distrust most
of all my own
reasoning. The quickness
of my turning. What-
ever shivers through me
when she touches
my hips. There is
no space that extends
my want, heavy & vague
as April wind. Lick
your finger. Lick an
envelope. Seal the edges
together with nothing
inside. How long am i
allowed to refuse
to find? Clatter of 20
dozen eggs in the can.
Clatter of my body lifting,
putting down again.
Absurd, really. How
hard it is to repeat
those three bare words
she said of me:

iv.

you like women
said a line i’m writing
across the field, abstract
or literal—is it all
so different? If we become
then there is preexistence:
beyond teleology, not
logic or knowledge but
action and / action’s pleasure:
movement across,
around this not yet
developed field at the edge
of the arbitrary
municipal area, field
of fox & hare where i
run, forgetting the forms
& their names in this blur
of green & not-yet-green,
where i want everything
as phoneme, broken apart
& prior. Color stirs
within, amorphous, pulled
toward the peripheral—
a diagonal glance. Law
of attraction: accumulation
& motion. Electrons &
their various allegiances.
At a point in the field
what will happen
is determined by the variation
of potential. How we disagreed
about the relationship
between rhetoric &
poetry. How two charges
placed at a distance
interact. What subsumes,
overlaps. All this language
dependent on opposition
as if desire only moves
between identity & its
negation. Cation/anion.
Man/woman. Is there
any abstraction i can hold whole
between my lips? My back
always against some wall,
some background, caught
between horizontal and vertical,
pushed back, pushing against,
the way i like to be kissed,
entangled, trapped—
an axis to resist.

If left right, if
sidewalk, if redbud,
if red solo cup,
if dogwood, if white
claw, if michelob, if
dandelion, if gas line,
if security guard, if
english ivy, if brick,
if step stride pivot, if
no one & everyone can
track me in this
plane, this approximation
where the vertical
bloodline intersects
with the horizontal
force of husband/wife.
Promise of descent,
continuity. i dream
myself as my mother
travelling with another
woman, fugitives
in a simulated landscape,
touching behind closed
doors, in overgrown
ecotones between military
camps and the neat, parceled
grids of buy-one-get-one-
50% off. Turn on.
Go down. Get off.
Which route? How soon?
Which hand? Geography
of either-or. Of irrevocable
is. i eat the xy
coordinate of each previous
hiding. How to exit
the euclidean. To oblique,
unsystematize. In the field,
my app fails at
classification: family of
mint, of daisy… Almost
at species! The mirror makes
no such promises, refuses
language, my looking.
How to enter another
dimension, another
economy. If after,
if despite. If near,
if toward. If unmarked.
If sundry. If within,
if without. If has,
if can, if would. If
obfuscation, if inside.
If tomorrow. If wicked.
If spillage. If elliptic,
if elision. If evasion,
aeration, afforestation.
If loneliness, if this
also, if other than
argument, if my mouth,
if loam, if here,
if hesitation, if her,
if she, if i, if she.

vi.

As if sitting on a wall
over a great drop—
which way is up? No
one has imagined me
in the story i’m telling.
The objects retreat.
The doorknob is
never the doorknob—
my hand slips from
the turning. My ability is
conditional on the loss of
my hands, whatever can move
inside of me. i’m not
afraid of loss, she said,
speaking of me. In the story
i haven’t written, two women
are working. i can’t tell you
of their work, only that
it is their own, only that
it is everything. There is
a table between them,
between them a nearness
made with their hands.
Who are these women
to each other? What passes
between them through
their eyes & lips? They are
sitting in a room i cannot
enter. When they are ready,
i will enter it.

________________________________________________________________________________________

H G Dierdorff is a poet from the scablands and pine savannas of eastern Washington, the ancestral, unceded land of the Spokane people. She is the author of Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fire, Daughter, which was published by the University of Nevada Press in 2024 and is a finalist for the 2026 Oregon Book Award. Their work has been awarded a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and appeared in journals such as CutBank, Arkansas International and Willow Springs. You can currently find them in Portland, where they teach writing at Clackamas Community College and poetry through Literary Arts.