Connor Fisher

Autobiography III

Sometimes the body smells a little
off, though we prefer not to talk about
those moments, and sometimes we would do well
to admit professional failures. Even shepherds
lose their sheep and with them the
wool that wraps the animals and what fatty,
sweet milk each ewe makes, brimming, as
it is, with gentle, delicate globes of fat.

But I have never been a shepherd.

My urge was only to join together
the small pieces of whatever strange
object you chose to muster up: an article, a
partridge, the sweat built up under your arms, a
child, the image of the moon in water, some
notes scribbled down then forgotten, then lost.

The Shore

Don’t ask me to go there again.

The only objects I prize are memories of shorelines: me in
high-waisted jeans writing postcards to old students, small hints
of familiarity among the misspelled names, but in the end postage
ran out. I chatted with the mayor’s daughter. Her in a little hat.

Later the story resumed disguised
as the old novelist’s shopping list.

There’s always a rhythm, isn’t
there, that keeps us coming back, that reminds us
of a conversation’s subtle momentum.
But the shore has become disconcerting.

As if on cue, rats started to creep
in. The willows leaned closer for a view. Their
branches sported retinas, not leaves, never
spring-green buds.

That’s all right by me. I never
mind the mess, the noise, the waste.

North Georgia as Palatal Sound

The Oconee river, here       to Uvalda————

Below       I ground beans;
frozen in the Piedmont       or Plateau.

And still the coffee       keeps cold:
a blessing beside lilies,       the beach.
The      poem      comes      slowly;           wasp at a
window.       Writing       a
daily practice
like               your first      story.

We       like the weather hot————
we prefer to see       the sky       directly————
that is,       the old afternoon          blab
turned sour.     So we prefer     our
consonants firm———— dental,       not wilted.

No news,           no horses; they          lag while    a
mountain       moved on       before them.
Evening in the blue ridge.           Sun’s down.
Like all the rest, we say.

Connor Fisher is the author of the chapbooks The Hinge (Epigraph Magazine, 2018) and Speculative Geography (Greying Ghost Press, forthcoming 2020). He has an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and English from the University of Georgia. His poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Typo, the Colorado Review, Tammy, Cloud Rodeo, and Denver Quarterly.
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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.