Of Ancestors
their bodies they knew primarily as instruments of noncompliance almost immortal lost among causes their hearts blacked-out hollows their lungs they pricked trillions of times they could ill afford breath the wrench of speech is that how one dies by sound by echo I repeat you endlessly in a mazy motion above ground maybe or maybe not my body retains the evidence of our crimes I want you to tell me how old we are—and the birds say oy oy oy yoy yoy oy yoy and the grasses gleam the gleam grasses say veh veh veh veh and the ruined amphitheater says u la la ula
Of Aftershocks
you count the seconds before you hear the edges unstick like a burning tree choosing to remain standing in ashfall we have foreclosed on a catastrophe pertaining to [ ] doesn’t yielding have its ribcage its roots don’t we need disintegration as a beaver does to live in fast water you will not be heard scraping up browned blossoms from the dirt you will not be picked up as a shell from your bed in the sand you check for wind strength escape routes direction of tree fall faults sliding in fits and starts sudden sunlight and species of insects you are only one or you are countless tremors perceived one by one you will not measure out justified pieces of yourself whatever has been cracked hacked split cut or demolished becomes home like those mechanical arms regurgitated and abandoned on the surface of the moon
Of Apocrypha
the narrative begins in over a thousand pieces the stars surrounding it are scattered falsely inscribed non-canonical things put away some stars are considered useful some books begin in the middle lift up your eyes look at the clouds moving in the wrong direction lift up your eyes the star that leads the way is your star then the text breaks off then a pale spire burns and collapses the light within the narrative begins near the bottom of page sixteen but leaves the setting and circumstances unclear does a person who sees a vision spoken against numerous scattered survive only in fragments
Of Interval
street wind thudding things sets of hundreds of particles waves avalanches riptides speech unstrung the horizon startles and opens what our hands hold vibrates with light falling to pieces disintegration the word itself wants to be syllables squeeze hard under-coat of fur combings from a dog or wolf substance without core lightness what we hold in our hands is soft is animal is disturbing now changing without taking shape a hand draws back the drapes sprinklers burst on our hearts bundled bouncing hollow not making sentences but speaking in a certain frequency
Of Anthropomorphism
you and I often appear to be exchanging information in a purposeful way like fish who feed off parasites on the skin of other fish the circle of love or the end of life depending on the food available finches have different beak shapes one from another what do they recognize in the mirror a question of language or a question of empathy what of a bear who paws the water to draw in a flapping trout a monkey who keeps a stone he uses to crack nuts hidden in his bedding a canary who dreams inside night’s delicate throat when I look in the mirror I can’t prove that I am conscious I try to scrape off the mark that was planted on my forehead reason like a hooded hawk perches on my forearm yet you are justified in presuming an external world we take turns asking is this the problem of other minds or a medieval treatise on love
Barbara Tomash is the author of five books of poetry including, most recently, Her Scant State (Apogee) and PRE- (Black Radish); and two chapbooks, Of Residue (Drop Leaf Press) and A Woman Reflected (palabrosa). Her writing has been a finalist for The Dorset Prize, the Colorado Prize, The Test Site Poetry Prize, and the Black Box Poetry Prize. Before her creative interests turned her toward writing she worked extensively as a multimedia artist. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Conjunctions, New American Writing, Verse, Posit, Tupelo Quarterly, and numerous other journals. She lives in Berkeley, California, and teaches in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University.
Image: letterboxd.com
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