It takes so little
to breach these fixed margins so
you can reach beyond this much
too much condensery that depends
for its sustaining blue upon
belief in the stilled idea
of this water silo, this oak red
table, this browning wheat the wheel
of the sun turns into a barrow
-ful of grain—even these apples glazed
in the bowl still sweeten with
summer days of flame not just rain
though who doesn’t pray for water
and a gyring figure beside
your own frame to upend the
static view that depends on white
specks you peck like feed for chickens
(golden shovel poem after Terrance Hayes)
FROM THE POCKET ORACLE
Don’t always be joking
—after Baltasar Gracián
as daffy fabulist
as stumbling funambulist
as punny as “being chased”
as riddled as “two tents”
as roof ledge flirter
as clinquant shammer
as faux defenestrator
as frequent on-the-slyer
as on top the freak tires
as daedal as tommyrot
as laugh at your own story
as ever be sorry
Sharon Dolin is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, Manual for Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016), Whirlwind (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) and Burn and Dodge (U. of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), which won the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Her ekphrastic poetry book, Serious Pink, was reissued in 2015. She directs the Center for Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Competition as well as the new international workshop, Writing About Art in Barcelona. In 2013, the Library of Congress awarded her the Witter Bynner Fellowship, selected by Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey.