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Sharon Dolin
USA
sdolin@earthlink.net
"Uncentered @
the Cathedral Rose Garden"
(Anxious still and almost missing it)
in buttercup light
(but not allowing quite the thing to pass)
given names like New Face, Ballerina
(my son & I)
Penelope, Perdita, Sceptr'd Isle
(bow heads into the candied blooms)
early morning even two peacocks are roosting
(though the next morning outside one turned his back)
and we have to peer up at them
(and spread his lush-eyed tail kept rotating)
in shadow
(away as though he found us unworthy)
to try and catch a glimpse
(but we resisted had to run in front)
as of the bloom
(as he kept rotating away)
you've been staring at
(as the wind might do or the diamond)
half-fallen and some faint perfume still possible
(center of your life each time you look for it)
ouch-snag
(only this is it)
a quick thorn as you brush by
(published in The Denver Quarterly)
so-called lull between the crash
of waves / the moment to set hull
to sea heave-ho before the storm
starts up again (as in some form it does)
before voices depart / faces gone slack / Atropos
spun, Lachesis took back. Now they rise
from this morning's slatch / photos give the lie
beaming Mom still holds the swaddled
child / Judith's still gabbing at Moosewood
over lunch (before she lost her hair) /
Billy the goatboy you nearly wed squints
reclining on elbows on a Jamaican skiff,
biting his lower lip in a wounded smile
that gives everything away.
(published in 580 Split)
These white nights she lacked sleep, she said.
How else conjure without black sleep, she said.
You hear the rushing cauldron-ear, sore throat;
How will it bring you near? Hack sleep, she said.
Worried pieces of the day replay: could have, should have.
If you're broken into bits how track sleep, she said.
Rome's Tevere already light, dividing art from heart;
Early and earlier hemisphere; why attack sleep, she said.
No nights, no morning star. You sit, a pool of light,
Inside the hum of where you are: Crack, weep, she said.
Forget all hand-me-down words of woe; even oh no.
Hissing addicts who like you, Flak sleep, she said.
Tomorrow is today, the border porous, Sharon a plain;
Before dawn, lie down, go back to sleep, she said.
(published in Good Foot)
They terrified us.
They were the gnarled roots of where her life was going or had gone—exposed.
They didn't keep her from walking—she barely walked anyway.
They were her yellowed ivory keys—unplayed—her twin sets of venomous spears.
(How did they ever fit inside her shoes?)
They were her rage hardened to a brittle clasp of curls. They were the last to stop growing.
They were her Medusa ringlets of keratinized horn.
They were sirens of beetles; they clicked when she talked.
They were a plague on both her daughters.
They were so hard we soaked them before cutting them. They resprouted overnight, insidious
fungi in the rain.
They were the one ugly unforgivable thing about her.
They are what happens when a mind lets a body go.
(published in Crowd)
and the answer is silence amid such gold-silver electrum
as Correggio knew to paint the heavens—
why are so many Job-challenged
as Judith—not as so many saw her
but as Artemisia knew her (she who slew
before being slain) not she but my Judith
Amazon-carved of cancer-born and delight
in the things of the world—why she—
after ten years—challenged again
so that now her womb—three times home—
is removed—and maybe her life. Is evil prospering
worse than the good hit by blight?
I don’t think so—or know what to make of this whirlwind—
or why the Leviathan stills gets to lash
his spiked tail and strike down or why
the all-powerful chooses to withdraw &
recede like some deuced cardplayer who
refuses to show his hand.
(published in The Bellevue Review)
© All Copyright, Sharon Dolin.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By
Permission.
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