Clay
- Clay
The shape of any thing is the shape a line makes around it.
So whatever my body can recall of another’s hands— hard, spent upon it.
So whatever fossil —a feather, a fern— slate surrounds.
If there can be one, the shape of any line is its direction.
Shape, direction: the crosstrees. That point where the two cross has been narrative,
history—our story. When did I choose The Flesh, Wanting?
. . . .
—In Pompeii, it took ash to preserve the struggle against ash.
Carl Phillips is the author of In the Blood, which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, and Cortége, a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is an associate professor of English and African and African-American Studies at Washington University (St. Louis), where he directs the Creative Writing Program.
