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.
When, in the evening, I explore the succulent shadows
with their blue veins and black chrysanthemums,
their thorny places,
In the 26th year of my age
I, two ears, two eyes, two hands only
(But only is enough to take the town)
i.
So it is, the chaos
contracted
in an unfolding scene
in five sentences:
Body. History. Evil. God. Human.
ii.
But what ideas,
in what facts? Inside the sun
the heat is sucking
the soil’s moisture,
Fulton near Pearl, dug up to lay new Fulton Center
subway power lines, a stone wall, three feet high,
in silt-muck seven feet below street level, inside it
Aged malt whiskey and cigarettes
consumed to enhance consciousness
—read Blake. You can’t regulate
It is the star above us makes us see
The distance of the firmament, immensity
Of the green wave that swells beneath the dark.
I bend
over the machine. Heat
and oil
When Mutual of Omaha supported
nature shows, it spared us sex and gore.
We stared as peacocks preened and rhinos courted,
The aging magician retired to his island.
It was not so green as he remembered,
Nor did the sea caress its headlands
But there were trees with human faces.
Afraid, I ran a little way
But must have wandered in a circle.