Brows, and: Nostrils, and: Pavan for the Little Finger of the Right Hand
Rent from DeepDyve- Brows, and: Nostrils, and: Pavan for the Little Finger of the Right Hand
Brows
Rain pours off the eaves. The house of my eyes is safe.The painter kneels. The gestures of wrist and brush live in the air.Here are tracks some long ago traveler left over the dunes.Beyond these ridges, the land stretches to where mists cover the mountains.I rest in calm awareness.
Nostrils
When I was a horse, they were velvet oblongs and I gallopedover flowered plains. When I was a dog, they were taupeand moist, and could make out even mouselings, deepinside their holes. When I was a young man, son of a Lord,they filled up with stone damp. When I married, theysmelt instead peacock and partridge, roasting in an ovenwider and taller than I. When I was a little girl I used to flarethem wide. I would dream I ran over the plains. I thoughtlong silken whinny were the most beautiful words in the world. [End Page 88]
Pavan for the Little Finger of the Right Hand
You told me you don't matter, as you helped wipe my white plates dry.But listen:Without you, how could Debussy have owned the Cthat soared like an angled wing?Without you, anything hurled would lose its way.Without you, my cheek would be missing its fifth touch.And if you were gone, little sister, how I would mourn your nail,of all the rest most like a shell.And how the dishtowel loves the edge where you meet the air.You are all the world to it: a shore, a hill. [End Page 89]
Lola Haskins's work has appeared in the Atlantic, Georgia Review, and London Review of Books, among other places. Her most recent collection of poetry is Desire Lines, New and Selected Poems (BOA Editions). She has also published books of prose: Not Feathers Yet: A Beginner's Guide to the Poetic Life (Backwaters P) and Solutions Beginning with A (Modernbook).
