A Darker Ribbon
Lift the Flesh door—
Vein seen blue
through the veil of skin, as light
through blotched glass.
Pulse implies sequence, light in circuit.
Blood makes its uncanny route
through the body, ribboning
into, through, then past—
Living is ritual and repetition.
Passage refigures the flesh as translucent:
it brightens the surface. But there
is no surface except
the marrow’s inmost window
by which the cell is born—eluding light
into movement.
Elegy
Wilted carnation leans far over the edge of the pot
wanting to poet not pot want turned turning to tint
tint to
leggy on their stems turning to steam turning
to evening just even and darkness ness nest
the length that it takes that it goes to that the
stale no stalled flower flow all
error flowing flopping over so the brown
petal pet partial touches detaches the last
time I did will ever saw sort sorted
through your house my house
And the petal bruised inclining declining
to what it can’t touch detach its last
scent sent flesh and spice its droop leaf
looped down to the dish wish wish
was yours not yours yearn mine
no error all the length it goes nowhere
to
Sun’s Net
Arise awry. Bless bliss.
This: thus sun sung
on dawn. Bird burred
in song insensate as
asters stir tulips. Two lips
address: undress, win kisses
in chaos endured. In duration
shun sorrow, so rove
raven and crow, haven encode.
Bright benighted tedium, medium
of hover over ever. Garden
guarding virtue veers to
lust lest bliss blister,
stir. Amen’s amends.
—
Elizabeth Robinson is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Rumor (Parlor Press, 2018). She has received grants and awards from the Fund for Poetry, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Maison Dora Maar. A new book, Being Modernists Together, is forthcoming from Solid Objects in 2022. In 2023, Threadsuns will publish her collection Thirst & Surfeit.