Ella Engel Snow
Ella Engel-Snow lives and works in Sagaponack, on eastern Long Island, where she grew up. She is employed by one of the last remaining working farms in Sagaponack. She has a BA from Goddard College, with a concentration in Sexuality Studies. Ella is the creator of the Living Dictionary Project, a word invention project which aims to use language for social justice and liberation practices. Find more here: livingdictionaryproject.com
somber days i write for the collards
i pray
my legs
out of bed
every morning is practice
to bathe
what a pain
but, oh oh
hallelujah
the collards
sink me to my knees
stain my pants
i love you
thicker the stalk
deeper the root
to hold our dead
and still
bear new leaves
this field is for gatherers
long fingernails dig
forgotten carrots
i speak to a dust god underground:
what can i offer you now?
my dawn sweat
seeds i keep saving
before the birds come home
a woman huddles
over children a bear
in a shtetl bobeshi
how many coughs
from the edge she
finds a note
half empty, half
congested
with grief
lists her tsuris:
food for tomorrow
the men will return
everything, my grandchildren
a virus
we’ll die before the dunlins come home
there’s nowhere to bury us
something about god
hundreds of hundreds of miles of wing flaps
i strangle the fever
wilted over my own knees
almost the end
of a long island
my shadow folded into maps
close enough
to hear salt waves clap
swamp of birdsong
i list my worries:
hindath¹
the men will come
my grandmother
a virus
we’ll die before the geese come home
i’m already dead
something about god
¹hindath (hin-dath) adj
to be existentially hindered by linear thought
(what is) faith
in memory of my grandma Jean
if you love me smile
writes my 97-year-old
grandma her eyes
waiting eyes
clearing everything
but a little blue for sky
at the dining room table
in her house on Crummey’s Run
my grandmother’s head
falls back
too heavy
for a neck to hold
she mutters
oblivion…...ugh…...ob---li---vion
the rest of us
keep eating and smiling
not asking
about god at all