Karen Holman

A Clasp the Sun

Opens and Closes the Sky

 

I’ve tucked my mother into a secret

fold that closes-up, tears

open then closes again

like my first purse

with silver dollars and quarters

 

that used to be magical.

Now money is acres to harrow

before the rains come.

 

She left with my locket

between her hands

into the country of the future

where language won’t fruit for me.

 

Here’s my letter from

a three-month tundra-night—

I hope you forget me.

 

If there is a blossoming here-

after, I think I’ve glimpsed it

sometimes—

otherwise, there’s no where

she would be unbroken.

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adverse events

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little violence,

the key’s

tsk, tsk,

undoing

a lock

 

tracing

constellations

in air

 

boiling pot

jolting

its lid

 

pulling free the roots

 

zesting, sighing

closing the blinds

 

thirty in

thirty days

has September

 

little violence

of irony

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putting a glass

on the table

 

filling it

with milk.

 

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Zero Times Zero Times Zero

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No single person disappears

when she dies

but a collective death slips

behind the horizon

so night may reign.

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Ghosts are homeless,

their bodies abandoned buildings—

sockets gone dark as blood

strangled of oxygen.

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First eyelids stiffen—

nothing to see here.

Next the jaws lock

a voice in forever.

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Then the muscles of the neck

go rigid from the repetitive injury

of turning, turning my head.

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Our North Forty

 

                            delphinium

our cerulean house

               as if the horizon flowers

its palmate umbrella, psalm, an air,

               ecumenical light

                             in icicles

poppies floating in a clear bowl

 

clean sheet, billowing sail

               the green where we lay

                            tic of forgetting

pulled by night’s drawstring

 

                             In that other world

where we never meet,

              I think I probably drowned.