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Disturbance of Surfaces

Eleanor Swanson

Disturbance of Surfaces

 

Strange metaphors succeed: solstice fish,

carnal soup, swallowtail taxidermist,

and other phrases that ripple

the once-glassy lake where chakra eyes

now appear, floating provocatively.

 

A coyote appears in the park,

(this poem will not bring peace

to the grief-stricken or explain

blood or how to staunch it.)

 

Comments will be included

on how the wind has ended

–with a few terrifying gusts—

the life of a tree.

 

That through all of this cold,

pure daylight, a coyote walks

across a sere field, its long

thick tail moving at a metronome’s

slow beat, reminding you this

isn’t the dog next door.

The day has fierce teeth

that break the skin without

drawing blood. The body

alive, the skin alive, lips

that can suck, the tongue,

that plump wonder,

the brown grasses telling

you to love this brown,

its delicacy, its mutedness.

 

What should we memorize.

as we live, speak, sing?

I try to memorize the cold of this day;

cold that burns, breathing through

fleece, breath slime.

 

Omne ignotum pro magnifico

Whatever is unknown

is held to be magnificent.

Somu Padmanabhan

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About Eleanor Swanson

Eleanor Swanson’s fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of publications. Awards include a Fiction Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Her first poetry collection, A Thousand Bonds: Marie Curie and the Discovery of Radium, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Her second short story collection, Exiles and Expatriates, won the 2014 Prize Americana for fiction, and was published by Hollywood Books. Her third book of poetry was Memory’s Rooms (Conundrum Press). Swanson lives in Denver and teaches environmental literature and fiction and poetry workshops at Regis University, where she also is a member of the Mile High MFA Program faculty.

Filed Under: Poetry

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