Bone Almanac

By JACQUELYN POPE

That black telephone would ring and ring,
fixed to its wall. It was a ring that roamed
the mind, while night drummed down
its list of last and lost events, circadian
paths that tangled where they tried to pass,
crossed and uncrossed hours.

The body’d
yield, caving in to sleep, the craved thing
neither wet nor warm, soft simple oblivion.

Yet you’d have none of it, stricken from light
as you were, turned and returned on currents
of exhaustion, low tides and high times,
unprettied by tricks of heat, cheated
of illusion.

Dream back to otherwise.
The laddered rope you climbed to see the lights
of town still dangles where you left it, a token
of time framed in an old exchange,
the horizon fallen away on all sides:

flattened, widened, extended unto vanishing.
Jacquelyn Pope is the author of Watermark. Hungerpots, her translations of the Dutch poet Hester Knibbe, is forthcoming. She is the recipient of a 2015 NEA Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, and awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

[Purchase your copy of Issue 09 here.]

Bone Almanac

Related Posts

The parthenon in Nashville

March 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

MATT DONOVAN
On my flight to Nashville, after / telling me the Parthenon in his town was far better / than the one in Greece, the guy seated beside me / in the exit row swore that Athena was an absolute / can’t-miss must-see. Her eyes will see into your soul, / he said, no goddamn joke.

picture of a bible opened up

February 2024 Poetry Feature

CORTNEY LAMAR CHARLESTON
There was tear gas deployed without a tear. There were / rubber bullets fired from weapons that also fire lethal rounds. There were / armored vehicles steering through the streets of the capital that stars our maps. // What we saw was only new to the people it was new to.

Headshot of Anne Pierson Wiese

Sharp Shadows

ANNE PIERSON WIESE
On our kitchen wall at a certain time / of year appeared what we called the sharp / shadows. / A slant of western light found / its way through the brown moult of fire / escape hanging on to our Brooklyn rental / building for dear life and etched replicas / of everything