Weed-Gatherer
wild flusters rose over rocks
tombs
callously forbidding
combing
may when nightfall
cutting emblem
surround serrate
loose—no? regurgitate.
sway a line
tilted and bulbous
creek
fall asleep
roles are funny things
are all bruises temporary
like reflections on water,
\creasing light,
light being
the evidence that something
happened in
(sig) nature
Cold with Abundant Sun
Take a stick, ply it with jam
run to the curb
and suffocate
Remember words sung to you
Shower me with tinsel,
a heart like mine—
pancake-style.
Abandon-
mint
stark
a tent star
a boundless
sum.
Braced
This table is a gnome in a family of thimbles.
The thing holds steady as a puzzle.
Fingers caught in holes of a doily,
my piece of the pie, my stronghold.
Perishables are upon us
Your heart’s a vase,
green light for the many,
loose change.
You lean again to sit quietly.
Breaths are halations through which we trail space.
—
Shira Dentz is the author of five books and two chapbooks, most recently how do i net thee (Salmon Poetry, 2018), the sun a blazing zero (Lavender Ink/Diálogos, 2019), and Sisyphusina (PANK, forthcoming 2020). Her writing appears widely in venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, New American Writing, Lana Turner, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and NPR. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem Award, and Poetry Society of America’s Cecil Hemley Memorial Award. Before returning to school to pursue graduate studies, she worked as a graphic artist in the music industry in NYC. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a PhD from the University of Utah and is currently Special Features Editor at Tarpaulin Sky. She lives and teaches in upstate New York.