Flood (Wake)

            Blue past naming

                                                               but not eyes—

squall chasing horizon—          forgetting

                                                                        the pattern—

                                                                               pulled in wake

lines crossings

                                     wild away        

charcoal                                   blurred between           clouds

                                                                              dark            and deeper

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

             all full              crashing           after hatches

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

My daughter and her   waterproof notebook in the rain—a look

                         on her face I can’t          thunder away                —anytime soon

heavy water—that reminder:

                                                                         shapes              kicked out alive

                        behind the wave of days

 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

  calling out stars            above selvage dark       then terror       white  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—calling out

                                    from the depths and yet—

          countenance that  /          undulate            / inviolate                     / music

                                                 —ghostly rays carrying             pulse

 at this rate: no confusion in water—turbinate, none other               then writ

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

                                                                        in waves

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Different light                          (figures)

arrayed by salt lamps (sussed

out by gris)—              I swear            

                         by the wave of            

  such space, patterns echo in a puddle—

                                    exactly a second—                   then three men suddenly

 with steel-bristled brushes                                arrive wholly dedicated—       

there will be no rust

on the gates of heaven

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Borderline, but not

                                     the mind—

                                                                        mobbed

by starlings                   and rising               

            among them

Eryn Green's first book, Eruv, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and his second book, Beit, was selected for the New Issues Editor's Choice Prize. His work has appeared recently in The Columbia Journal, The Ben Jonson Journal, Sixth Finch, The Bennington Review, Colorado Review and elsewhere. He lives and teaches in Las Vegas with his wife and daughter, as well as a very bad cat.