Mila van der Have
Winter 2024 | Poetry
Hauntology
I want a dragon to be a girl
and all my girls ⏤ dragons
fiery and dislocated
from the true north
of their saline hearts
and when it rains it angers them
for now they have to hang back in the desperate caves
of the body once known
(ah yes the body;
the green velvet regret
of the thing captured
at the wrong moment
and the angle is off)
and yet, and yet
there is so much dreaming to be done in the dark
in the abstinent landscape of the unreal
that lets them forget the monsters they are
where talons reach into the devastation
of the absolute
as easy as picking an apple without it having
any meaning at all
other than to be free
of what haunts you
in the silent bleachers
of the mind
(that drags them
like vacuum cleaners
across a carpet)
forgive them they know not their claws
nor the art of letting go of
what has dug their wings
in them, yet they know its slithering
the leather prophecy (to return what was
stolen to yet another thief)
creasing itself around them
fur-like as the forest but
not the broken
night they
unfurl
to be
Milla van der Have is a Gemini. She is the author of 3 chapbooks. Her latest collection Ox and Mandarin | Wayfaring Strangers is published in English by Dancing Girl Press and in Spanish by Ril Editores. Milla lives in Utrecht, The Netherlands. She is the host of Poetry Lit!