photo by Matt Walker
Work
At the party I can’t work. I pull from the bookshelf
a biography of wives. It is brief.
I look up ‘event horizon’
reapply my silly wardrobe:
evening, spring, needles, peas,
the sun, if it was born stuck and freaky,
and the earth, the day we married.
I just can’t work. The pier is in pieces.
The boats pulling the other boats say yes
along their watery routines,
over abysses like they’re footholds.
A bird is the invitation you say yes to.
The world’s busses may be late. It might have snown.
And the earth, sold out of wreathes. Wasn’t it?
breed
a house is an employment of trees, a crowd is a path to a door.
if this is a stage
then ask if this is a stage.
the light of a cigarette outed by snowflakes, no privacy
in the crowd when it’s burning.
if we feed the sun we give away velocity.
i dogear the daisy blooming against the clapboard.
nothing will happen
we tell the sun,
if it does
watch me catch it.
it’s your ice, the dust in your gun when i rush the stage,
if this is only a stage.
can i build it for you?
the carpenter frames us in destroys movement like a photograph.
can i build this house for you?
a ring circumscribes an answer on my hand.
Sommer Browning writes poems in Denver. She is the co-editor of Flying Guillotine Press, a handmade poetry chapbook press. Either Way I'm Celebrating, her first book of poems, is coming out with Birds, LLC in early 2011.
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