How you only filed your fingernails,
never roughed them with clips or cuts,
only gently sanded each one smooth -- or
so my grandfather says you did, admiring, remembering
this ladylike gesture
which set you apart,
sets you sitting (in my mind)
delicate as a china cup of cooling tea
rounding still each nail
into a perfect pink saucer.
30.11.09
3.11.09
Biology
As two sticks, rubbed together,
intuit flame
so our blood remembers,
reminds our bodies
to friction.
We never knew how well we knew each other already
until touch recalled,
and breath stirred recollection unrecovered,
generational:
This immemorial shiver which offers
why either of us (any of us) are here at all ---
for more.
intuit flame
so our blood remembers,
reminds our bodies
to friction.
We never knew how well we knew each other already
until touch recalled,
and breath stirred recollection unrecovered,
generational:
This immemorial shiver which offers
why either of us (any of us) are here at all ---
for more.
The Catching
When my heart, that gasping silvered trout,
has been pierced by your shining barbs
and lifted by your invisible lines
and lies trembling
with life in your wise grasp ---
then you will find your fingers
iridescent, and your palm
cold.
It is a thin thing you hold in your hand.
has been pierced by your shining barbs
and lifted by your invisible lines
and lies trembling
with life in your wise grasp ---
then you will find your fingers
iridescent, and your palm
cold.
It is a thin thing you hold in your hand.
Abyss: A Villanelle
I feel a leaning, as over an abyss
of empty dark and drink my vertigo
black, and vast -- I hear the electric hiss
of lack, the ringing in my ears of miss-
ing sound. Swayed by its silent flow,
I feel a leaning as over an abyss.
Unstrung, the earth decenters, bucks and lists.
Uncertain now, bereft, I start and slow.
Black and vast I hear the electric hiss,
the static crackle, the separating kiss
of parting memories in a now near-vacant show:
it leaves me leaning, as over an abyss.
Once met by fill, this absence -- like a fist --
rebounds, recoils, deals a stunning blow
(blackening, vast, I hear an electric hiss
of coursing, startled want). Just this I know:
I am now where I never thought to go.
Black and vast it seems, an electric hiss,
and feels a leaning, as over an abyss.
of empty dark and drink my vertigo
black, and vast -- I hear the electric hiss
of lack, the ringing in my ears of miss-
ing sound. Swayed by its silent flow,
I feel a leaning as over an abyss.
Unstrung, the earth decenters, bucks and lists.
Uncertain now, bereft, I start and slow.
Black and vast I hear the electric hiss,
the static crackle, the separating kiss
of parting memories in a now near-vacant show:
it leaves me leaning, as over an abyss.
Once met by fill, this absence -- like a fist --
rebounds, recoils, deals a stunning blow
(blackening, vast, I hear an electric hiss
of coursing, startled want). Just this I know:
I am now where I never thought to go.
Black and vast it seems, an electric hiss,
and feels a leaning, as over an abyss.
The felt leaning
Though I blogged here throughout my undergraduate career, and am now more officially blogging here, I have need of yet another. I am happy to move on from the disorganized rambling that was my last blog; I am happy to discipline myself to try for pertinence and pith on the group blog. I don't much miss my personal blog; I do, however, miss a place to post poetry. Hence, this blog. I hope it will be an added incentive to write. It is a sincere aim of my life to write good poetry. I am committed, at least, to the aiming.
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