Lighting the Shadow is about a woman’s evolving journey through desire, grief, trauma, and the peculiar historical American psyche of desire and violence. These poems explore the international and psychological wars women survive—wars inflicted through various mediums that employ art, race, and literature. Furthermore, the collection is about a woman’s transformation and acceptance of her complicated attempts to balance her spirit’s own spectrum. Pulling the poet away from death, these poems insist that she open her life to her own powers and the powers of a greater world—a world that is both bright and dark. "Lighting the Shadow is a unique embodiment of the unseen space between language and spirit. . . . The imagery in these poems rips through to the reader with a freshness that comes only from a poet who knows the terrain of the subconscious . . . Bravo."--Afaa Michael Weaver (1/1/2014 12:00:00 AM) "Lighting the Shadow is by turns surreal and heart achingly real--it is, at every turn, a book of spellbinding radiance."--Terrance Hayes (1/1/2014 12:00:00 AM) "These poems are searing and ecstatic, peering into all manner of experience and peeling back layer after unexpected layer. . . . Lighting the Shadow is rare and revelatory."--Tracy K. Smith (1/1/2014 12:00:00 AM) Lighting the Shadow is a unique embodiment of the unseen space between language and spirit. . . . The imagery in these poems rips through to the reader with a freshness that comes only from a poet who knows the terrain of the subconscious . . . Bravo. Afaa Michael Weaver" Lighting the Shadow is by turns surreal and heart achingly real it is, at every turn, a book of spellbinding radiance. Terrance Hayes" These poems are searing and ecstatic, peering into all manner of experience and peeling back layer after unexpected layer. . . . Lighting the Shadow is rare and revelatory. Tracy K. Smith" RACHEL ELIZA GRIFFITHS is a poet and visual artist. She is the author of three collections of poetry including Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose), which was selected for the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn. Lighting the Shadow By Rachel Eliza Griffiths Four Way Books Copyright © 2015 Rachel Eliza Griffiths All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-935536-57-4 Contents The Dead Will Lead You, 3, Diaphanous Corpse, Woman to Lightning, 7, Small Prayer to the God of Epiphany, 10, The Woman and The Branch, 11, Woman, With Her Own Crossfire, 12, My Dress Hangs There, 14, Disarming of Shadow, Arming of Light, 16, The Reckoning of Relics, 18, Elegy, 20, Fragments of Poems Returned by Sender, 22, Native Fire, 24, July 13, 1954, 25, Home, A Photograph, 27, Another Woman's Coat, 29, July 22, 2012, 32, Vergüenza, 37, Self, Traction, 39, A Dark Race for Enlightenment, Recurrence, 43, 26, 45, Woman, New Delhi, 46, I Select My Jury Before Justice Appears, 47, Occupy Flower, 48, Elegy, 49, Anti Elegy, 52, Before Blood After Honey, 54, Elegy, Interior Figures, 55, Human Ceremony with Watermelon Sugar, 57, The Year in Pictures, 58, "a word of rescue from the great eyes", 64, Verses from The Dead Americans' Songbook, new world, 79, questionnaire: foreclosure, 83, ambition, 84, gun minor, or the inconsolable constellation, 85, new culture: creature, 89, dear America, 90, gymnopédie, 92, 33 ages for solitude, 94, a dry run: American Caesura, 96, The Human Zoo, Recuerdo: Primal Art, 101, The Human Zoo, 102, About Progeny, 103, Uses for Silver, 105, Self, With Praise, 107, The Human Zoo, 108, The Skin I Live In, 109, Elegy, 110, The Human Zoo, 112, Somewhere, 113, Dusk, Monochrome, 114, The Human Zoo, 115, Self Portrait, With Decay, 116, The Human Zoo, 118, Notes, CHAPTER 1     The Dead Will Lead You     Across scarred meadows, red     blue, white. The star-flung sky scrapes     gold grass. Unknown milk, endless     the stone figures in the fields.     Who will embalm our bones?     Shattered inside of mythologies,     we are idols, praised by blood & sun.     You will call & listen for the children,     cradled in moonlight. Side-by-side,     their silence deranged,     deflowered by ghost primers.     Years pulse the skull,     the ashen hills, the expanse of desert     shorn with prayers. You walk alone     through mirages, museums,     eyelids, water, estuaries     where wings repeat flight     until this desire is memorized. This,     is what you must learn     by heart. The closed flesh     as commandment, a terra cotta     smear of fingerprints     praying along the blue cave.     Mercy is the pulse of lupin     in a yellow field. My mother's     eyes are forgotten vases of irises.     Lighting the shadow, a woman     crawls out beneath her own war.     Ruin, I have lived     inside your estate.     I remember the night horses