Breathe Poetry

o_glorianna:
And on the Third Day
by Andrew Allport

We called off the search,
and the weary climbed down from the glacier
with their dogs exhausted in the spring sun
too tired to eat the ice in their paws.

We had called his name, mostly for show,
a ritual that kept us moving: in the high bowls,
their stunted pines predating the flood,
in the steep ravines sliding loose with scree,
loudly at first, then speaking it to each other
then spelling it out on forms required by law.

It is a form of praying, he claimed, to walk
out to the very edge of your life. Every time
the reply comes clear as a stone
at our thin crowns. It misses
almost every time, humming as it goes.

o_glorianna:
Cool Dust
by Aaron Shurin

A heave of afternoon light pulls a tulip from the turf, a bower for locusts, a cup of shells. The farmhouse tilts, a bent shadow on wheels. In cedar rooms a family is molded, silent, wrapped in the wire of steel eyes and stopped voice, romantic ash. This is not my house, my ghost, my uninvited guest, my lost labor of love, my thicket or grease, my JPEG gessoed or rawhide suit. The yellow light throbs like an internal organ — soft body of an overture to insect sounds — sapling of a new world — whose future awaits me at the tilting window of my own domestic hut. Perhaps this is my mesh of hours, my muscular ache, my guardian sash, twist of rope carved around an old maple trunk, my rod of power red with anticipatory friction at the edge of an emerging set of planetary rings. Stained ochre by the air I pitch forward, a vanilla-scented pear that floats or falls. In the rattan chair on the front porch by the blistered boards of the front door a figure of tar watches. Cool dust sparkles and settles. Shadows have made me visible. An empty wagon flares on the hillside.

voleuse:
It was a terrible cloud at twilight,
by Alessandra Lynch

humped painfully against
the last blast of light;
a threadbare wolf pressed in smoke;
a tyranny of doves on the outset pecking blindly white.

It was a terrible cloud—
everybody stared at its shifting instead of:
crumpled handfuls of animal below,
traffic lights, red beady ones, even yellow flashers,
green signs half-toppled, roofs slack with snow.

It was a terrible cloud—
isolated from sunset
and moon—on a furious sojourn.

THe wind swerved
again and it was two thin bears in suits,
then men in gasoline-proof
jumpers, long arms flagging
like those in buildings ready to jump,
then uneasy triangles or angels, whatever
everybody would believe. The terrible cloud

could not contain
its mists, it split into a wispy
shepherd, a faint sketchy
hand trying to touch
a boulder impossible
to budge. When it blew

to a blur, the village
wishfully claimed it, warning
the world it was sinking.
Everybody hooked fingers
through tree-boughs, shadows,
stones, strangers. The bell

to itself thought: How lost
have lost; how many lost lost;
many passing through lost; lost
to themselves, everybody thought (but

the were in on it—
they wore the same smoke).

voleuse:
My Mother Raised Me to Be a Cowboy
by Alessandra Lynch

Cause I was lonesome
for spur, dug
my naked heel
in glass. Cause I needed
clank, got my bones
thin and close to the hard world.

Cause I lost grasp of what was
smoke, shifty ghost-foots, thready
past, gripped the visible
moon-horn, turned leathern face
to the old-cat sun, clutched
the rope, jerked on the boot and saddled quick.

My cattleprod cramped a shadow.
My gaunt rifle ready for damage.
Got used to sleeping in bad spaces
snowed in with burlap.
Cause I was odd-eyed, hungered with wolves,
I yowling, bristled yellow like prairie.

Cause I ached for the stars, palomino
went lame. Cause I had no thought
to cry home, memorized the swagger,
hip-twist, slow smile. And mostly
my quiet was scorched. And most of my whiskey
drunk fast. Most of my sundowns forgot—

Most of the stare-downs stared off—
Most of the town killed to dust—
Most of the world smothered by hats—
Most tongues cut out—I spoke in grunts—
Most of the sky was mine.

Till the low hawk swung down.

voleuse:
Wolf
by Alessandra Lynch

My owl was
a deadened petal. My moon
a leadweight hat.

Sinewy and sidelong, I
slowly circled, tail
bruised yellow,
a mouthful of splinters,
and skittery gunshy eyes

that met the skulking bullet
one spring and couldn't
fix again, didn't want to feed—

my brittle haunch arched thin, made
space for rattlesnake to rise.
My shifty flank-bones,
driftwood in tired water.

Under the familiar
plummeting clouds,
in the vast, vulture-slow
terrain

(all west, all sinking)

I stopped claiming
the light

and hunkered off with rag-tag wing,
blood matting my chin, the dead croon
deep in my throat, the body
beside the point.

voleuse:
Child of Fear:
by Alessandra Lynch

By the bed that lies square
By the sky that lies shapeless

In a wrecked yellow forest
she is studying holes.

The bullet of solitude,
that faceless instructor,

bores through her skin, forming
dark portals from whatever it touches.

Under its tutelage, she is sister to wood-bee,
drilling dank shingles to dust.

Her tiny punctures make eye-
sockets for rain.

She takes an oath against plans,
outstacks cedar with absence-of.

The gypsy moth is her hoodlum leader—
together they infiltrate the grove.

(In thin air, the little dunes of debris
pile, whispering unintelligibly.)

There are endless parades of holes, the sky
is humming with holes, the earth collapsing
to dirt-frittered lace, as she

writes the book of unmaking.

voleuse:
Imposter
by Alessandra Lynch

Imposter returned. Lighter than snowfall.
With her dangling mittens and fox-thin chin.
Came to the back porch by starlight.
Came in a clown's cap and a lopsided
ribbon. She had many guises, but you'd memorized
her track. Snow sprigged around her; the stars festooned,
then leaked into air—burning cold on burning
hot. She jazzed through and slid to ice—
that's how clear she was, how precise. Imposter made
war a kind of warmth. With a loose-fit grin,
shadows pacing her face. A rabbit lay dead
in her wake.

voleuse:
On Sisterhood
by Alessandra Lynch

When you wrote the word fell
I fell like the bullet blossoming in bone
I feel like fog in its faceless mask
I fell like a blind quill on the blank
I fell like a narrowing eye on the plank

it was fell, fell, fell
down the page, even after
being marked—the l
crossed out and the e
teetering the thin margin
lonesome for its sister

I fell
like the lampshade in its static girdle
I fell
like the clock hurtling through its face
I fell
like a mortuary
where dawn evades its tracks
I fell
like blood
from the spool of my sister's dread
I fell
like the gun from the unthinking
hand

to hard
to feel.

justwolf:

Bloodvein
i.m.

Soft on a leaf, last of the garden exotica, found only at dusk and pale
as the face in the sick-bed except for that long line
going wing-tip to wing-tip, heartstring, nerve-track, a thread you might pull

were it not for the way she turns and settles her head, the long vein
in her throat showing lilac by lamplight. The shadows that peel
from her fingers as they spread must be part of some long scene

of doubt and decay where all of this plays out: the fractured pearl
of the creature's eye, the journey from leaf to lamp that has long been
written in, like your word to her, like hers to you as she palms the bitter pill.

--David Harsent

justwolf:
Hairless

Can the bald lie? The nature of the skin says not:
it's newborn-pale, erection-tender stuff,
every thought visible - pure knowledge,
mind in action - shining through the skull.
I saw a woman, hairless absolute, cleaning.
She mopped the green floor, dusted bookshelves,
all cloth and concentration, Queen of the moon.
You can tell, with the bald, that the air
speaks to them differently, touches their heads
with exquisite expression. As she danced
her laundry dance with the motes, everything
she ever knew skittered under her scalp.
It was clear just from the texture of her head,
she was about to raise her arms to the sky;
I covered my ears as she prepared to sing, to roar.

- Jo Shapcott