By Gillian Conoley
Where the page was, do we walk
into the blown
door frame
atonal soaked in cloud our obsolete
more room now
clear nectar
for the happy Graces
walking in
the white glow
curling along
calla lilies
which flute and sway
with their austere
good looks
If we take
our power to the next
power
to the silence
on the other end
do we say hello
clear nectar to the happy Graces their disassociating hands more hands to reach for in the
flowering fibrous grasses
where the page was
a white she-goat
we laugh over
Do we pick up glass
do we
take silence
a car fast through a flood
throwing sheets of water
to the next car
blinding temporarily
struck in the white glow
If we look from our page up
to sun
how to permit voyage
going for source
and from it
Time
confabulates
the whistler: a mother in the grocery store her coral lips
an embarrassment doing
birds a partial Sinatra
would we rather she chew gum or throw pearls
in the dishwashing
liquid. do we fill
each empty dress.
if black coal hair was our mother’s like the bare-breasted island beauties of Guam
a father brought home
photos of
after war do we stare
at them, a child stung under dinner’s
table. later our bare smooth
teenage legs rushing past
put boyhood friend on acid back
into car drive him
to airport to some
base then Nam
his draft number was One
sun
sun
Do we leave
nectar
to the flowering
do we have
Grace
if we try to be more holy
take care the screen in the church parlor
sip the nectar’s
tissue-like contour
the guiltless guilt of whole cloth thick, lit as if
wax paper drapes the
pear tree
steady, short
still flowering not about to fruit
If we look from a page
sun curling over what
do we want
to point out or paint time is lost
unwaving
light
storm’s
blizzard
a car fast through flood
throws sheets of water
to the next car
blinding temporarily
the happy Graces cutting shade providing chambers with their disassociating hands
more hands to reach for in the flowering fibrous grasses in the white widening white
Gillian Conoley was born in Austin Texas, where, on its rural outskirts, her father and mother owned and operated a radio station. She is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Plot Genie, Profane Halo, Lovers in the Used World, and Tall Stranger, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her work has received the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Fund for Poetry Award, and is widely anthologized, most recently in W.W. Norton’s new Postmodern American Poetry. A new collection, Peace, is forthcoming from Omnidawn in spring 2014. Her translations of three Henri Michaux texts, never brought into English before, will also appear next year, with City Lights. Editor and founder of Volt magazine, she is Professor and Poet-in-Residence at Sonoma State University. You can read other recent poems of hers here and here.
Issue 1 | Fall 2013
The Traiguén Epidemic
Seven Strategies for Survival (in a small town)
Excerpt from The Weapon in Man
The Devouring Economy of Nature
Here the neighbor screams for Frankie
I’m waiting for you like waiting
Dear No. 2 Pencil, Decomposing in Whiskey
Excerpt from a Novel-in-Progress: La NENA in the TL
Eighth Grade Science: Darwin Et Cetera
The Apple