- Reinvention of a Garden
Could I invent the drum? I have made stone shell bone the unopened water Crabs Flesh exploding into dream Loneliness does not glitter it does not invite the desert but comes matter-of-factly making a cleft-lip sound bugs bits finger the window of blood intrepid flowers skin desire: thick dancing wave-rising vertebrae throat full with glittering insects dream sandpiper dream a robin running through her devitalized shrub [End Page 849] and touch? more than sand can contain: vertebrae driven into gardens where (sniff seconds crest refusing to close around lines lips bathed stomach warmed my sun-beaten floor and fissure desire ((drum through a water-creating wall bird bird bird two or three windows invent a room look in: look up: look out
Nehassaiu Degannes is author of Percussion, Salt & Honey (Providence Athenaeum, 2001), a chapbook of poems, which won her the Philbrick Poetry Prize. She has also published poems in a number of periodicals, including American Poetry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Callaloo. After completing the MFA in creative writing at Brown University, she completed a three-year graduate acting program at Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island.