Poem of the Day
Consecutive Preterite
By Jessica Laser
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
I take the books left for free recycling mainly for their smell,
I stick my nose among the pages, into business not my own,
then stroll around someone else’s home,
peeping into their kitchen and their bedroom. But once
their smell has faded and the book’s imbued with mine,
Rain constant hours
shadowy bamboos crowning
veranda handsome, exotic
Claustrophobic trumpet vine
tired of city
life no choice
Ovo in regolith
scumbled, awake on
a rectangle mirror
Quarry in cold
rain, standing pools
of slurry below
Do you
only
go to new
places
is it true
did the
planet
just get
born
I read
a book &
then I want
to read
another
one about
Russia
The sun allows you to see only what the sun
falls
upon: the surface. What we wanted was what was elsewhere: cause.
*
Or some books say that’s what we once wanted. Prophets of
cause
never, of course, agreed about cause, the uncaused cause: or they
*
terribly did. Asleep, I struggle to stay inside sleep, unravaged by
heart-
piercing dreams—craving, wish, desire to remain inside, if briefly,
*
obliteration. I cleave to the voice of Poppea’s nurse:
oblivion
soave.
*
Not frightening, the word
oblivion
as Oralia Domínguez, hauntingly clinging to the sound, in 1964 sings it.
to Antonio M. Cubero
The flags sang their colors
and the wind is a bamboo shoot between the hands
The world grows like a bright tree
Tipsy as a propeller
And here, the remains of a field
A path withstands the onslaught of ferns
Mushrooms grow
on contorted limbs of a felled rônier palm
Handles of pruning hooks