Sarah J. Sloat
Palisades
Today I saw the blossom in the gas
flame on the stove, burning blue: 27
trillium ribbons fed by vapor. Carissima,
I have fallen for a whaler who believes
bellwether is the name of a flower
and if this is to be a week without
shipwreck, if the sky should hide the dark
delft cracks in the china that tend
to multiply, then peel these petals back
as hours. From the cliffs it’s plain,
the world contains a dangerous ration
of rock, the earth is overwrought
with mansions, iron railings trellising
round them, mad as Ahab. To perish
or vanish is what the whalers pray
when the will lies down like butter
on the sea’s sunny heath. Carissima,
my young man has no tie to land,
his bouquet’s a humble one forced
by any wooden horse to water.
On the palisades, arriving ships may
bring blue weather, or if the sky puts on
a serious face I’ll nail my prayer shawl
to the wall and say if this is to be the day.
Ceraunoscope
I’m not supposed to be shaking the sky
this early on a Thursday
but the way things are going I might as well
be a stampede of bulls
or a windsock gone spastic.
The radio recommends rain but at dawn how much
I hate myself starts up the fog
and for my sake nothing is left to be seen,
worth being felt
and my ice cubes won’t freeze.
Fog crawls
from the cogs of alarm clocks.
It seeps from the sockets, and drips from radio knobs,
static inhabitant of household appliances.
Fog begins as a little cough of God,
not willed but wily, inevitable
as dust that won’t disappear, existing
only to be broomed from one room to another.
That’s why I quake into the furze wilds of Thursday.
I don’t need to touch fog to feel it.
It collects at the foot of my bed, yawning
at dread, siphoning
ease from my gait.
Its glut wants to shake. I crack awake
to find it’s my job to shake it.
Self-Portrait with Lava Lamp
Here stands a gadget laughing my laugh,
a trick that mimics my breath
and soothes my inner spastic.
This flux puts its thumb to my pulse,
the sludge that is my blood.
Here’s an idea like a cud being chewed,
an intention that flounders
with nothing to nail it to.
This gadget unpacks my lack of direction.
For all its fluorescence, ambition
caves in with a dolloping boom.
Here stands a gadget breathing my breath.
Throb of a world unstoppered
that all day betrays how
I’ve been crawling the halls, bulging
with purpose and falling apart.
Sarah J. Sloat grew up in New Jersey, but has lived for many years in Germany, where she works in news. Her poems have appeared in Court Green, Hayden's Ferry Review, Juked and Linebreak. She blogs at The Rain in my Purse (http://theraininmypurse.blogspot.com)
Return to November 2012 Edition
Today I saw the blossom in the gas
flame on the stove, burning blue: 27
trillium ribbons fed by vapor. Carissima,
I have fallen for a whaler who believes
bellwether is the name of a flower
and if this is to be a week without
shipwreck, if the sky should hide the dark
delft cracks in the china that tend
to multiply, then peel these petals back
as hours. From the cliffs it’s plain,
the world contains a dangerous ration
of rock, the earth is overwrought
with mansions, iron railings trellising
round them, mad as Ahab. To perish
or vanish is what the whalers pray
when the will lies down like butter
on the sea’s sunny heath. Carissima,
my young man has no tie to land,
his bouquet’s a humble one forced
by any wooden horse to water.
On the palisades, arriving ships may
bring blue weather, or if the sky puts on
a serious face I’ll nail my prayer shawl
to the wall and say if this is to be the day.
Ceraunoscope
I’m not supposed to be shaking the sky
this early on a Thursday
but the way things are going I might as well
be a stampede of bulls
or a windsock gone spastic.
The radio recommends rain but at dawn how much
I hate myself starts up the fog
and for my sake nothing is left to be seen,
worth being felt
and my ice cubes won’t freeze.
Fog crawls
from the cogs of alarm clocks.
It seeps from the sockets, and drips from radio knobs,
static inhabitant of household appliances.
Fog begins as a little cough of God,
not willed but wily, inevitable
as dust that won’t disappear, existing
only to be broomed from one room to another.
That’s why I quake into the furze wilds of Thursday.
I don’t need to touch fog to feel it.
It collects at the foot of my bed, yawning
at dread, siphoning
ease from my gait.
Its glut wants to shake. I crack awake
to find it’s my job to shake it.
Self-Portrait with Lava Lamp
Here stands a gadget laughing my laugh,
a trick that mimics my breath
and soothes my inner spastic.
This flux puts its thumb to my pulse,
the sludge that is my blood.
Here’s an idea like a cud being chewed,
an intention that flounders
with nothing to nail it to.
This gadget unpacks my lack of direction.
For all its fluorescence, ambition
caves in with a dolloping boom.
Here stands a gadget breathing my breath.
Throb of a world unstoppered
that all day betrays how
I’ve been crawling the halls, bulging
with purpose and falling apart.
Sarah J. Sloat grew up in New Jersey, but has lived for many years in Germany, where she works in news. Her poems have appeared in Court Green, Hayden's Ferry Review, Juked and Linebreak. She blogs at The Rain in my Purse (http://theraininmypurse.blogspot.com)
Return to November 2012 Edition