The RetroLounge Daily Poem Thread (Sat 5/23/2009)

[RetroLounge]

Wintering

      Dakota Territory, 1884

Already, winter makes a corpse of things.
Snow reshapes what ice has taken. You've lost

interest in letters. So let sunrise come.
Let smoke grow darker by the light of day—

what I could spare of you I've burned already.
The fencepost needs repair. Let sunrise come.

Let panels of light make thirsty the ice-
caked stump of oak. Let the sky go empty

as December's intimations, when in snow
we fashioned ourselves side by side as fallen

angels: yours, the greater wingspan; my outline
barely reaching. Daybreak. I lay my body down

in powder. Roots torque up through the chest's
blankness, snarl of knots unloosed. What comes,

on parting you insisted, will come. Ice splits,
in the distance. What breaks will break. Let it.

Shara Lessley

*************



Shara Lessley received an MFA from the University of Maryland. She is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. Her poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in Third Coast, Hayden's Ferry Review, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and Borderlands. She lives in San Francisco.

*************



RL

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this...

It's pretty bleak...Like winter.

Or maybe it's just my jet lag talking...

Still, great imagery...

Thanks, Retro!

[RetroLounge]

2. ...

RL

[XemaSab]

3. I like it!

[RetroLounge]

6. ...

RL

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. acceptance coming after grief

let it.

thanks. RL.

[RetroLounge]

7. You're welcome

RL

[Sky Masterson]

5. I may have to rethink my obsession toward brunettes.

What is it with Poetry and Hot Chicks? thud!
She's no Sandra B. but still
Pretty Poem.

[RetroLounge]

8. No doubt...

***thud indeed***

RL