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Gnomon
A bone style, sharp-pointed, incises letters on a wax tablet. A bone style flat, broad smoothes what is written. A graver can bend a legend, settle or balk, in such a manner legal & slow like time kept with shadow or signed with a stylus on straw paper. With style the drummer whisks and wipes […]
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Interpretation
The spirit is in the box, and then it is in him. Then they are on risers, rising. This is called daemon- ization, but the first one says no, it’s sounds, not words. The first one sings, and it’s words, sounds and words together. Then it falls apart. The second one sits and talks, or […]
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C.
C.c. He is one whose command of words, he is another whose command of words and music, I never find unmoving. I sit alone, tossing horseshoes. Outside the horses gallop down the middle of the streets, or run wild over plains, their long dark manes, banners in the wind, sleek rumps rising, falling, magnificent animals […]
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The Poem Is a Frame for Silence
The bird opens its beak and sings its note And then the beak comes together in silence. So Nature and Living meet together in void Like the closing of the bird’s beak After its song. Heaven and earth come together in the Unbegun, And all is foolishness, all is unknown, all is like The lights […]
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Matthew Henriksen, contributor
Suggested Reading Apparition Wren, poems by Maureen Alsop You & The Singing Knives (reissues), poems by Frank Stanford Daybook of Perversities & Main Events, chapbook by Frank Sherlock When You Have a Rabbit, chapbook by Landis Everson Tight 3, edited by Andrew Hughes, Michael Schiavo & Whit Griffin Dog Girl, poems by Heidi Lynn Staples […]
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Craftsmith or Counterpoise
The center-pinion pivot of a clock can be beveled a hundredth slow or fast, by the best, but whether a hickory stick spins on a lathe spun by his foot from a treadle and flywheel, everything is a bit too still for torque or froth on a colt at the track after a race, when […]
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Winter (1946)
Just over this hill, my father was killed When a train hit his car at a crossing. There, many years later, One could still find a sign – Rusted, beaten, broken – Instructing one to stop, look and listen. As a boy, I used to run tumbling Down this hill, across a strong winter light, […]
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Prairie du Chien (for Chris Glomski)
Nictitating slice Corgis gentle on the hunt I took a cat muzzle to the picnic. The partial terror of windows Italics mine slant the latter war.
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The Day Job
A firefighter I am going to be a fire fighter just imagine confronting all that fear. They need certain people for all the small spaces. Just imagine how great it will be: write a poem; slide down the pole; write a poem; drink some beer; write a poem; put out the fires of dragons.