Gravity
- Gravity
Everything is poised to fallwith its own graceand decorum.
Platters from the refrigerator's lip,cartoon anvils, goblets'swan dives
into exponential pieces threatena domino effect: the originof ruin.
Only objects dare taunt fatethis way. If you havea household god,
you may be lucky enough to notinterrupt descent withyour skull
the way Israelite night watchmenmanaged to dodge straymanna and quail.
Oh, that's where your vial of lightwas hiding, in shards withall that clay. [End Page 61]
Patty Seyburn has published three books of poems: Hilarity (Western Michigan University Press, 2009) won the Green Rose Prize given by New Issues Press; Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) won the 2002 Journal Prize; and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998) won the 1997 Marianne Moore Poetry Prize and the American Library Association's Notable Book Award for 2000. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Paris Review, New England Review, Field, Slate, Crazyhorse, Cutbank, Quarterly West, Bellingham Review, Connecticut Review, Cimarron Review, Third Coast, and Western Humanities Review. Seyburn grew up in Detroit and earned a BS and MS in journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in poetry from University of California, Irvine, and a PhD in poetry and literature from the University of Houston. She is an associate professor at California State University, Long Beach, and coeditor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry, based in Los Angeles. She lives with her husband, Eric Little, and their two children, Sydney and Will.
