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Emily Strauss - 2


A Poetry of Place

in such a poem, the voice
present indigenous, the always
of a furrowed trunk of gray bark,
a native belonging here

in such a poem
momentary details can be distorted
by global climate anomalies
induced by our mastery of god,
a hurried time-lapse development.

I've lost control now, forfeit 
my surety, this elegy, false, 
in a scene painted too nicely
even as I sit here, somewhere
watching an old bird feather 
skitter in the wind.

This is some place, anonymous,
this is a real wind, alive, not
a pretty view but I will miss it.

I'm keeping the present, cottonwood 
trunk, fluttering dead leaves,
keeping this place
splayed on white paper,
a museum, a specimen. 
​

Inertia

In the city of restless souls
in the stone-paved square
next to gelato vendors dozing
in the late afternoon heat
 
thick-set women shuffle out
of the cathedral where they go
at 3 PM after washing the sidewalks,
passing dusty sleeping dogs.
 
They pause a few moments
to tally their onyx rosary beads
with moving lips. Around the side
of the church yard, behind a crumbling
 
wall splashed red with lichen lies
the city of the dead, comforted
by a fountain of Saint Francis
holding his urn, surrounded by tidy
 
borders of ancient Eglantine roses
in profusion. Swallows swoop from
beneath the thick beams, just graze
the granite grave stones lying askew.
 
How close these two cities lie.
Their sidewalk smells and leafy humus
both alive with death-defying
fecundity counter all the inertia that
 
roots us firmly to the ground on either
side of the wall, staring at the other half.
​

Writing at Dawn

memory recalls--
scenes reaching out of silence
fragments lodged between pauses
this yearning to keep pictures from melting away
like knowing by heart the shapes of sculpted
canyons after a ruby sunset has flared out
ghost shadows flooding the plain
when the full moon rises and you follow
the trail past sheer walls remembered--
later setting down glimpses of sky and smells
until the view clarifies and stills
elements of perspective resolve
as the night gives way to cool rocks at dawn--
writing faster​
​
Picture


​Matthew Henningsen's Profile
​Go to page 1 of Emily Strauss' poetry

​Appropriated Lessons

poets stress over a single word--
the single word— the definite
or indefinite, writing about

nothing, or something worse--
obscurity, what can't be expressed,
a paradox found here or there.

Meaning only arises coincidentally,
not with what is stated but how,
a reconfiguration of bits, a rhythm

of a throbbing heart— this is what
poets stress, the strain of the ear.
As if penetrated, poets push back

into the flesh of sounds spoken
aloud, but seldom talk of empathy,
about understanding soft hands--

this is missing from the hard silhouette
of a dark ridge, stark lines full of thunder
rolling, the beat of rain, that heartbeat

of definite words, that rhythm of breath. 
​

Moon Light  ☊

Through the skylight
the full moon splashes
gray-white opalescence

not a new task— every month
it rises roundly yellow against
the liquid amber and white oak
landscaping or steel towers 
of power lines across the mud
flats at low tide

with the distant lights
on the bare hills
shining across the bay

every month is not a new
thing, we may count on its
regular appearance like
a dream of a lover
returning
recurring
a loss that never leaves
this its white reminder, 
the round face of what 
we must remember
or are forbidden to forget

so we need to notice
every time, even as we
forget his face exactly
now, and his arms--
the moon feels colder 
these days
through the electric wires
the plane trees
the skylight
on my single bed.
​​
​

Picture
​Go to page 1 of Emily Strauss' poetry

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