the true keeps calm biding its story

Rusty Morrison

Selected for the 2007 Sawtooth Poetry Prize by Peter Gizzi

Winner of the 2008 James Laughlin Award

 

A sample poem from the book

 

please advise stop

attempting again proximity with the dead as though they stay in place unmoved stop
as though I could measure closeness if I scratched it with tiny marks stop
opened again the fine pleating that opening each time damages stop

as if it were a stranger's hand my hand again replaying the reaching out it failed to do stop
gauging the weight of each inherited object ignoring the object itself stop
dwelling increasingly on the floor between memory and involuntarily pushing memory away stop

a few darknesses are inward a few are outward pointing branches in a stand of poplars stop
reason can't bring over something on the verge of real but unwilling to become it stop
I can paint any blue on a ceiling and none on the sky please advise

 

 

Copyright © 2008 by Rusty Morrison. This poem appeared first in MANTIS, along with the following others: “a pleasure to rub the rough grout . . .”; “there are no words on the wall of daylight . . .”; “my father's dying makes stairs of every line . . .”; “the rustle of a Sunday bundle . . .”; “I saw the window spread its wings . . .”; “any object inclines away from memory . . .”; “nearness is a funnel into which I keep . . .”; and “I add brush-strokes to my visions . . . .” These poems were accepted by MANTIS too late to be included in the acknowledgments of the book.