Wisconsin Death Trip
I want to swear a warrant
for your hands.
Hipstroker,
I want you broken,
gladiator parts of you
scattering the sand.
Better exiled to a sky-lab
polishing chrome,
whittling slabs of soap —
your own private Stonehenge.
I want you anywhere
but here:
wearing black as an afterthought.
leaving prints
on my glass-bottomed boat.
Breaking the First Commandment
What do my hands create?
A monarchy in long thrones,
a court of ants on cards,
a granite beard, hawthorn
after rain, and two fires.
Space is the Capitol,
the black marketplace where
beggars in a hurry to die
shoot the scales like stars.
And there on the corner,
slouching on the lamppost,
my brain of angels
notches wood,
looking up
a spiral of smoke,
cars fled, bars
of morning on the awning,
my head an apple
for the arrow.
Look down:
the street is covered
with curls of wood,
rococo at his feet,
the gilt watch drawn,
the appointment book
neat crows.
Wind pokes holes
in the curtains
twelve o'clock high.
The bow spreads,
flies me to my
graven image.
Night Thoughts
We have drifted too far south
from the equator.
I can feel the ice form
through the middle of the night.
We must be near an island
with its normal hazards
of isolated life.
A bird repeats its solitary note,
locked in this frieze.
I say to myself
certainly I hadn't expected
the blow struck in anger.
These things happen.
Then what does this do to my reason?
And why am I taking off my clothes?
Mood
First touch was sweet
because there was distance,
impossibility.
I can still hate for it,
black and silver threads
giving way
to a place
above the water.
It was raining of course.
The plums all
ravaged to the south.
©Elisabeth Murawski.
Elisabeth Murawski, like the T'ang dynasty poet Han-Shan, divides her time between a government job and writing poetry. She is the author of Moon and Mercury (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1990) and Troubled by an Angel (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1997). Publications include: Grand Street, American Poetry Review, Field, The New Republic, Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Quarterly West, Poetry Northwest, The Literary Review, Puerto Del Sol, and others. She is the recipient of four writer's grants from The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos, NM.
Back to
LEGIBLE
home page.