Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light
Dec, 03 2018 | no responses
The poems and prose in Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light thus delve into Babbitt’s passion for illuminated manuscripts, his confessed object of reverence.
Poetry
Nov, 14 2018 | no responses
My ma // said agony // said hurt // said she’d be // damned // if pain // ain’t the one // thing all folk // say’s true // says all folk bow // when pain // huck // her elbow // across they neck
Nov, 14 2018 | no responses
I’m looking // at a scrap of fog a quarter mile off / and wondering / if I touch a cedar here, / will a cedar there feel my affection / at the rate / of three inches per second, / or if I bite it, if I tell it / I’m lonely for what it has / though swaddled / by learning yet again / where intelligence hides, how thoughts flow / through air and ground / in a way I can’t invent, only destroy. I don’t know
how I’ll ever prune a tree again
My Mother as an Instrument of the Divine
Nov, 14 2018 | no responses
Before stamping out her own breath, my mother / rehearses the act in tiny permutations. Flowers // assailed by some rare malevolent illness / are mercifully plucked from their beds. // Family photos are similarly liberated, one day / collaged in cracking and scrupulously assembled // volumes, the next scattered over floorboards / without respect to date or theme. I am 25.
Nov, 14 2018 | no responses
In a moonless mattress of night / I made a boy of you. // In a heaven without hair / the trees strip off their leaves // like an ill-fitting dress. // With a mouthful of petals the boys / acted their buck racks & ten points. // History is a family of wifeless nail-biters. // Welcome to heaven where we already know / you’re lying.
Nov, 13 2018 | no responses
Throughout this collection, Syersak reconfigures and responds to art, philosophy, poetry, and history by directly addressing them. The “dear” of “dear architecture” that opens this collection represents the structure of address—what Syersak calls the “apostrophic pose”—that this book endeavors to build through matter and language.