Autumn Returns to Martins Ferry, Ohio
Closed for Storm
Coordinates
Correspondences
Dropping Weight
Eating Emily Dickinson’s Clothes
Emergence
Fruit Jar
Hammer Strikes
Kitchen Kisses
Lemon drop
M
Orzech Farms
Rules of Engagement
Rust
Sears and Roebuck
State Office Building, Seventh Floor
The Need to Use Your Teeth
Correspondences
Roy White
The fur is still smooth
as a clarinet or a rainbow
jumper. The lumps, though,
are unsettling, a veiled threat
spelled out in giant braille.
The vet says they won’t kill him,
but something will: him,
and Shelley, and me. I wouldn’t mind
going first, in a quick plane crash
or modest nuclear strike.
Some perfumes, says Baudelaire,
a trifle ghoulishly, are tender
as baby-flesh. His faith
in mystic bonds between the senses
is one I do not share. Still,
if your fingers were as sharp
as a dog’s nose, you could listen
to a record just by feeling
the grooves. This poem
reaches you, I imagine,
through your eyes; for me
it’s sound in my head, then touch
of fingertips on keys.
Words in every sense make up
the forest that holds us
in its familiar gaze: blurred sun,
false double, deep mirrors,
sweet native tongue.
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as a clarinet or a rainbow
jumper. The lumps, though,
are unsettling, a veiled threat
spelled out in giant braille.
The vet says they won’t kill him,
but something will: him,
and Shelley, and me. I wouldn’t mind
going first, in a quick plane crash
or modest nuclear strike.
Some perfumes, says Baudelaire,
a trifle ghoulishly, are tender
as baby-flesh. His faith
in mystic bonds between the senses
is one I do not share. Still,
if your fingers were as sharp
as a dog’s nose, you could listen
to a record just by feeling
the grooves. This poem
reaches you, I imagine,
through your eyes; for me
it’s sound in my head, then touch
of fingertips on keys.
Words in every sense make up
the forest that holds us
in its familiar gaze: blurred sun,
false double, deep mirrors,
sweet native tongue.