Poem of the Day
Consecutive Preterite
By Jessica Laser
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
That summer I learned Biblical Hebrew / with Christian women heaving themselves / toward ministry one brick building at a time.
Smoking a dart, I said.
I just met my first bird.
Born of a sharpness, and set to music.
In my hat I sit
in my cellar
waiting
The enemy’s late
Those photographs
of Brezhnev’s death, of Brezhnev’s corpse in state: the
forced
lilies stuffing his coffin, the million mourners in their
threadbare Kremlin.
I told you the words to it oriole.
Now when an ear come
say it right.
Kiss the mother
that needs to become
that needs to need
grounding
I’m going to make a poem out of nothing.
Having worn my camouflage for leisure
I am William, who by nature needs to chant triste now, I’ll make
this song from it
In my experience—waking
life—nothing had readied me for such an arrival.