Thrush Poetry Journal
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Sara J. Grossman 

How Your Body In The Field

Whatever the field is 
you want to be stitched to it:
figure rustled 

to the sun’s body, a gap of owling air. 

Whatever you are, 
you’re not this: 
all old till,

lambent and tidal. 

You’re a singular, 
accidental thing. 
Queen of Glass Blossoms,

Crater of Face.
Whatever the field is
ached in time, 

you will never be
this hard, this true.




Morning (II)

This isn’t the beginning or end of time, 

but its umbra: 
light’s accidentals, 

its darkened shell, 
magpies quartering 

sky to a hexagon. 
Each vein of sun

adjusts the red-wheat, 
sends the ache of a thousand days

to the blue-wood aster,
ring of fire.




I Dream CALLER: [redacted] Is A Window Or Door

I know you do not like it
when I place you here

between panes of glass,
the ardor of a hinge.

But I do not know how
to keep you alive

any other way.
To put you here

was to stabilize
the memory of your

sound, to archive
the parts of your mouth

that had burned in fire.
See, I need gambrels

of cedar, corridors
that lead to extant citadels

because in them
your bustle sounds

and I’m certain of the suddenness
with which every

crystal-blue sky
divulges remarks of you

even if it’s only in dreams
that I admit this.

O my glass sweet,
my cedar night,

what is your name?
With what horror

do I now hear my own
voice dangle in reels of air-space

centuries from this language,
this scornful tomb―


Note: The phrase “CALLER: [redacted]” has been taken from September 11, 2001, 9-1-1 dispatcher transcripts. In
an effort to protect deceased callers, the City of New York has redacted all identifying information from public transcript files.”





Sara J. Grossman has been awarded fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her poems have been published in Guernica, The Cincinnati Review, Memorious, VerseDaily, Louisville Review and elsewhere. Her current book manuscript, Mineral, was a finalist for the 2013 Kinereth Gensler Award offered by Alice James Books. She lives in New York City. 




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