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Shira Dentz
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If you’re going to keep criticizing the beginning,
nothing will follow:
how like an eye
nnnnnnnnnn
an oval tooth in the background
what’s in there?
platelets; dry blood left on pillows, the taint a tint of speech.
but getting to the background
in the dark are there kind letters
and if so which are they
flotsam and so forth before and
after hot and juicy
stir the sheen of a closed eyelid
quick, cover your ears
after death letters loose shed like leaves hence autumnal
they taste of earth, ferment
firmament a sac with rice-paper skin like around testicles
herring, a slave to scripture. count my way
out. which word is the exit door?
if. sorry. pulse like foreign
earthenware. what do you think grows in this soil?
careless thoughts root. routes
samovar.
now let’s cut back to you. the plethora of
images i am putting together to house you.
like the details of dinner i leave
out uncovered while i do something else...
what freedom to delay, postpone
but when i eat it’s solid thing, like a right word
all this and about beauty. what do we have
eyes for? i can shut them and make love,
make believe. pictures take your
voice splice give you prompts, and it’s how you dance
i have a fountain of desire and i draw letters
like light resting on a body water
before drowning
He told me to write the sun sags like a breast in the sky.
Impressions of him multiply like
pennies.
I wanted to hear from death; my
ears tuned sharp to detect language, that is, time, in everything.
Remembrance is mourning. Over and over the
loved one, to memory.
An intense beam of sunlight that
doesn’t stay very long in the same spot, but hovers.
You think the dust particles are
the particulars of air; snorkeling comes to mind.
You try not to look at your hands, the age in them. Similarly, you avert the image of your body as you see it sometimes—hideous, not the way you dreamed it. And what about the other dreams? Do feelings in older people change like their bodies; soft, past crisp, colored leaves scattered all over the drive?
His voice particular, the inside of a menorah. Silver and warm at the same time.
The world shattering like teacups. quiver.
Silent moss and fingers of light. purple moonlight in thin air recalcitrant take a few steps back, sharp now. What meets the eye meets a feather.
Retrace, sift, for something previously unfound.
On the other hand, I don’t want
to hear any stories.
My life scattered in a pool; and
that is a cliche, and yes, I wanted to read the circles in the water as
they foretell the future, like handlines: o ye, speak to me speak to me
Numbness like a cloud. condensed water.
Bio: Shira Dentz’s
poems have appeared and/or are forthcoming in various journals and anthologies
including FIELD, Seneca Review, Chelsea, American Letters & Commentary,
Salt Hill Journal, Barrow Street, The Journal, and Facture. She received
the Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem Award in 2002, and was
the finalist for PSA’s Cecil Hemley Memorial Award in 2001. She
has had poetry air on National Public Radio, and recently her manuscript
was a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award. She is a writer, graphic artist
and copy editor living in Brooklyn, New York.