Transcendence The first thing is silence: the muffling power of snow, that Fairbankssnow hanging on every limb and twig. No noise from nearby roads, nosounds of planes taking off at the airport. Just my skis gliding along,my poles crunching the snow. My breath, and if I stopped to listen, thesound of my heart beating. is…
On the special ed school tour, he askswhat is that tiny room with the tiny window,and the assistant admissions directortells us it is the seclusion room.We look at the closet-sizefeatureless space with the metal-reinforced door and large thicksteel bar on the outside, and our facesare not as shatter-proofas the glass in that window.With all the…
How to describe the colorof a pond gone fuguein autumn windsurface tinctured blue,sky-stained and deeper watertea-stained from steeping in peatthat netted entanglementthat took a thousand yearsto form. How far the landcan go in tellinga story, waterdark as obsidian nighttoward which I progressevery day feelingendless longing to hold on.
Translated from the Braj Bhasha by Chloe Martinez Listen, his gorgeous face is all I can see. I’m living and breathing him; he stays rent-free in my mind— what I’m saying is, I keep seeing my beloved. Wherever his feet have touched the ground, I start dancing. I’m telling you: his face. Mine. Transfixed. Mira’s…
Dear Dactinomycin, I have a question: How do yousave a body from the body itself? Your job: stop cells dividing, freeze growth.The proof: hair coming out in clumps, disappeared eyelashes, platelets drained solow they called for a transfusion. A mother’s job: grow a small body, then grow it up.Even volunteer to disappear, like mitosis, after…
— after C. D. Wright’s Casting Deep Shade “Beech is Anglo-Saxon boc: book, document, orcharter,” she (C. D.) writes. “The shoots grow fasterin the dark,” she writes in her 250-some page diaryof obsession. Here, now, at the smallpox cemeterynear where I live, the shin-high marble grave markers,corners softened, stand canted, like awkward lumber.Bone-white, chiseled only No. 1, 2, 14, they are…
In an old story, the Almighty shaped claywith His hands to fashion the first man.In this story, enslaved hands shaped clay to make bricks to build storied big housesthat will stand in this land. Both storieslead on to sagas of births—natal tales filled with first wails and nations of folkand feats of nation-building. Birthinga nation…
from the Arabic al-jabr, “the reunion of broken parts” I must have been fiveor six years old when a dragonfly landedon my forearm, at the end of our long driveway,near the mailbox, on a two-lane rural highway.The dragonfly’s body reached from my elbow to my wrist,blue and black, with four imposing wings.The globes of its…
I don’t suppose I’ll ever get to Italy, but I have the terrible tundra at least—Frank O’Hara (Lunch Poems) I have been to Italy and the tundra too,but it’s not terrible. Frank, you don’t knowthe smell in the dry fall of picking berriesand I might be unable to find an Olivetti,but even up on Murphy Dome…
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