Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776

from Knot

Stacy Doris (1962–2012) from Knot If there’s ever identification, that’s longing. It mopes, tree-like, rooted yet Disconsolate. Are birds some of minutes’ pockets, or is it natural, this Bobbing, where leaves release, catching in ignition, thus “spring”? If acts Graft, each can function as a branch added, permanent in terms of living, But not. One at most coats or peppers the next, dropping hints, circles, A figuration. Lets go: dizzy voltage. Where sight recycles, we’s glue back in Place differently, artificial as ever. In retreat, they’re a coil, spark that implodes, will never perhaps open. The green sucking down into leaves, we jealously sense without touching. Such concentration inebriates us, even without objects. Consistently Unspoken, venerating may result in a self, unfocused and blotchy, yet it Spreads. Then wrap holds belief. Once bandage needs no wounding or Perhaps the hurt is impulse, one that shies away, harm marks, and you’s Afford no prevention. Somebody turns more numenal, clouded, to envelop With an improvement on limbs. But where love surges from and is paralyzed By need, meaning in perhaps every case, does its deformity twist? “This is one good thing about time, how there’s no need for it,” says the cat, Definitive and formless, so American perhaps. Growth, a kind of prayer, Contradicts hours in a show of dispersal, where what’s to be closed in on, Isolated, is blood, meaning everything invisible, all that composes water, Each duct. Again, sound. Anyone, in adoration, might wish the air different As a present to somebody, gentler scarf never pictured or required, a Mounting so stairs is useless, so the river lifts, so an alarm or all ringing Trace the most delicate attention, and the atmosphere more clearly folds, Where privacy’s a gift of skin: marking. 230 gArnet poems Money’s from repeatedly asking, which disgusts. So’s companionship Perhaps. To live in iteration or any moment’s stream paralyzes and Silences, where civilized is counting’s prime return. Where to pick at Or worry a fiber, even in conformity or pattern, spoils texture. And phrases Don’t complete because alphabets forge paths; underground corridors. Where is ambers, which reputedly captures or preserves? In air, so all in all, There aren’t ends to any step’s echoes; no bridge back to the bland fizz Of ice milk, depilatory scents, nodes labeled “home,” a voice. Recycling’s That uninflected. Love says give up and touch immolates. If not, a middle drowns, absent, Mere, confused, while clarity pledges; threatens on an edge. But “brim,” As any instrument, body in the abstract, ruminates meaning dreams Functionally, proceeds by elimination, cut backs, and vacations, sporadic. The lake, subject to freezing, shows focus but by forgery, not even pools, Not even tips, not budging. Eats due to abundance; hungers otherwise. Seethes, the pond. Then a part sets off, a tick, unhinged in the span Between useless contributions. Chrysanthemums or any feathered bloom, A draught. Configurations hollow apprehending by increment, by repetition, which Overturns momentum, so leaves and ropes pattern and tell no chain; defer Seasons, flatten days to an option. So disease can detach a route. So cellular Equal binge or, obversely, gaping. Healing and illness are communal, Group, stick and fault to every member, swallows. Looming or seeded from A book or glance, how else could sound make it from one place to the next As a unit? Except that particles conspire, lodged in each wave, in Overwhelming homogeneity, so bound. As if all air’s wasabi, only mild, Where stinging’s missed. 231 stACy Doris It fires. Files and fills where we’re circuitry, so utterly burned; young. Thus urban glorifies to crackling. A city, meant as where consciousness Conserves, based on a compromise, now reduce memory to movement, When success is in charting, a trajectory, making way, thus wealth. Here, Judgment’s molecular, encoded so rejected. Stained. Flooding thus afloat. In the thing we’re all a part of: nothing or netting, so progressive’s Increasingly participation, so offspring: everyone’s bearings herald Blindness. Urbanity also is prejudice or love, unseeing. The leaders Set out to locate what they’ve pictured, with blinkers, thus guilty, heroic. Here, repetition incites until it ceases. We’s play out its minimum Requirements. Each application coats with some sheen, just as all painting, Any sense of brush, corrodes. Once in the stream of action you’s vanish...