Hannah Rego
Someone Asked What That, Moving Above Us, Was Called, and I Said, “Cloud”
Across the bar table from you / in the dollar beer night light / we talk like it’s real life / the room small and undefined / like real life rooms / with you / it is the unfevered dream / this dream / it’s like / the third week on the dig / after all the digging / after I’d torn whole strata up / rapid speed with a pickaxe / this takes force someone said / I hit suddenly / with trowel edge I felt it / how the earth had changed / I found a new century / I wasn’t digging / I revealed earth after earth / or maybe / the simple dream / of your voice and my voice / in the bar’s wood / maybe it’s like / looking over Mira de Aire / the bone in my hand / the vertebra of a 30,000 year old deer / in my hand / & I wanted instead / the small of your back / like a wife in my hand / People have eaten / in the same cave / for as long as they’ve known it / since before they were people / the deer we found / or the bread we chewed at the cave’s mouth / we do the same things one million times / but when you / in real life this time / when you / nervous mother / ask / Have you eaten? / I’ve never hungered before / Take me / please / I know a place / I know / where it’s sunny / take me anywhere
Hannah Rego is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. They have attended residencies and workshops through Spalding University's Low-Res MFA, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Winter Tangerine, and the June Jordan Teaching Corp at Columbia University. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in BOAAT, BOMB Magazine, FIVE:2:ONE, Underblong, and elsewhere. They live in Brooklyn.