The Loom
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- The Loom
I drowned in sleep. And once my lungs were gills, I watched my liquid shadow, fathoms deep, Weave through a trembling warp of light and hope a weft that kills.
No working hand Had anything to do with how the sea Hurled itself in salt against the sand, or how unfeelingly The shore forgot to be the land and mimed the sea . . .
Or how, under the dream, One tightening thread Gathered those crooked strokes of light into a beam Through which I rose—not quite from the dead—more from the blame
Fanned out in Microshards of extinct species threatening my head— Motes that might have been curses, or killer faces, Had they not welcomed me, as I woke, with human voices. [End Page 379]
Anne Stevenson is the latest poet to earn the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry. Her Selected Poems (Library of America, 2008), edited by Andrew Motion, is the second title in the Neglected Masters series sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
