From notes from the understory

 

notes from the understory (layer 20, direction one)

All of it begins. I’m soaked to the skin by a sudden downpour.
My gray silk blouse won’t come free from the skin of my chest,
my arms. I abandon the meanings of silk and skin to
a moth-wing thinness, fluttering skyward.

Sun returns to warm the blue question of what sky might
become, which remains answerless as it fills with what
seem to be clouds, but they’re only potential.

All of it begins. I ask if there are still sleeves wetly affixed
to what …

February Poetry Curator Richard Greenfield

Poetry Doesn’t Let Us off the Hook

Richard Greenfield teaches creative writing at the Creative Media Institute at New Mexico State University. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, Subterranean, and is one …

What Millennials Want

 

We want to weigh 150 tonnes
and be covered in grey-blue skin
smooth as oil. We want our lungs
to deflate into our chests
when we hunt
the midnight zone

A pile of white styrofoam heads

Contagion

 

When the arena of war shifted to the planet,
when we listened for the scrape of pangolin nails,
the black beat of rhinos, the crex of corncrakes
who would not …

Knotwork

 

a knot for the nettles and ditches
   a knot for the ragwort’s scald
a knot for the ghosts at the holy well
   a knot for the missing child

a knot for …