‘Desire’ by Joy Harjo

The use of repetition in this poem is so masterful that it almost makes my head spin. If “say” means “consider the hypothetical”, it becomes very choose-your-own-adventure because every if builds on the former. Each opened door allows us to reconsider what desire means in this context. Look to this example: “Say the stars have never learned / to say good-bye. (One is a jewel / of blue magic in your perfect ear.)” Because star burnout can last 100+ million years, stars are caught in limbo. How many centuries would a star have to cross to even be able to say goodbye? So many that it’s functionally useless to do so… I see the star in the beloved’s ear as both lovely and tragic because the blue magic feels like a consequence of this coupling that will slowly burn itself out. Even the ear in its perfection is unable to hold.

But if “say” is a literal action we’re urged to take, “say” constantly calls us back to our bodies. It feels like a stage direction making us pause before we actually flow into the image. We come into the poem like an actor reading a new script, feeling out the words before they actually begin to stick. Each half step down the page leads us to realize how much the quiet leads to intimacy. The leaps from image to image feel like a gathering of tender moments that the speaker has tossed around their mind many times, and it all culminates in the final: “say all of this is true and more // than there are blackbirds / in a heaven of blackbirds.” We’re not only called to verify these small connections, but imagine just how much has been left out of memory. If the blackbirds are their own whole universe, these saved spaces must be the same.

Likewise, beginning and ending with the notion of flight creates mirroring. At the opening, the water’s so sweet that it’s as if many sugar wings are collapsing on the tastebuds. Desire here is a sweet spring that’s come alive; as the water flies, we hope that it’ll spill into our mouths and quench us. In closing, the blackbirds’ wings are substantial enough to encompass a “heaven.” I see a space so encompassed by dark wings that you can’t help but notice their flurry in the little light that’s been afforded. We’ve gone from the swallowable to the solid, implying that the speaker’s desire has moved from a simple recollection to a full-blown reality that we can inhabit if we only trust.

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