Jacket worn and shabby like a pack of wolves. Face like a marble chip. Sitting in a ring of his letters in the grove that sighs of mocking and mistakes. Yes, the heart is blown like paper through inhospitable passages. Now sunset steals like a fox across this land setting the grass on fire inContinue reading “Sentinel”
Tag Archives: poem
New World
“Saturn, its frozen rings fire-white, reflecting the sun from a billion miles. Maybe there’s a word in another language for when distance dissolves into time. How are we changed when we stand out under the fat stars of summer, our pores opening in the night? The earth from Saturn is a pale blue orb, smallerContinue reading “New World”
Stan’s Wharf
THE FISHERMAN If I were young my hands would hurt by dawn from paddling. I would make the worn smooth oar suddenly crude by my touch, novice yet strong enough to send me across the width of the lake. Instead, these fishing nets I throw, one here, by the hidden cove, one further, near aContinue reading “Stan’s Wharf”
The Gift
“I love sun & rain on my skin. My suitor & conjuror, is that the burden, the curse, the gift? Does wisdom make my eyelashes tremble, does it draw the blood forth, unearth temptation? When innocence measured me from crown to a dancer’s arch, the Furies marked my path. He said my name & theContinue reading “The Gift”
First Syllables
THE THREE ODDEST WORDS When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it. When I pronounce the word Nothing, I make something no nonbeing can hold. —Wisława Szymborska, from Moment
Release
Relinquishment — Sharon Olds On a black night in early March, the fire hot, my daughter says Wrap me in something. I get the old grey quilt, gleaming like a sloughed insect casing, and wrap it around and around her narrow nine-year-old body, hollow and flexible. Cover my face, she hisses in excitement. I coverContinue reading “Release”
City Tulips
“again the unbroken rumble of trucks and the hiss of brakes roll upward out of the avenue I forget what season they are exploding through what year the drill on the sidewalks is smashing it is the year in which you are sitting there as you are in the morning speaking to me and IContinue reading “City Tulips”
Creature Fear
CROW’S VANITY Looking close in the evil mirror Crow saw Mistings of civilizations towers gardens Battles he wiped the glass but there came Listings of skyscrapers webs of cities Steaming the glass he wiped it there came Spread of swamp ferns fronded on the listings A trickling spider he wiped the glass he peered ForContinue reading “Creature Fear”
By Appointment (Self-Portrait)
“I like a steady disruption. I like it when the solid mantle turns to shingle and water rushes up it over and over, in love. My white-noise machine from Argos is set to Crashing Wave but I’m not averse to the presence of numerous and minute quanta moving very fast in unison; occasions when aContinue reading “By Appointment (Self-Portrait)”