[Realpoetik] Danica Colic

[RealPoetik Magazine]

BACKWARDS

Brick to dust, ore again
to its hollow veins,
glass to sand       The trees

again, and the birds
backwards to roost

The thrilled grasshoppers
in pelts of grass

Here are the rivers
thrashing with fish, floodwater
brimming, oh mineral, oh
disease

Buffalo and weather

Thickening weather, the ocean
thick as oil       The sun
cutting, beckoning

come to me

The earth
calling to itself, all
the stars calling
to each other, again
again       Everything
unbuckles: water, grain
virus

Oh my heart,

all the made
is unmade
and gallops to the center—

the only
place left; every other place
is erasure, every other place
is particle—

which is home

Isn't this sex       Isn't this
the final Glory       Was I ever
a name



AFTER

Will there be a memory

      of structure
                            of tree apart       or

one foot in front of
                                 the other
a flock of birds

dividing             a bird
                                      then a bird's eye

watching another       a feather

       the
              rolled stem of a feather

and the fan of threads along it       each a

      different length

each an each             how we will miss

the separate branches       and the voices

      among the branches       calling return

return       what

                 will we be when

there is no we                      only

the singular element

                                            what

will It be without longing

                                without the arched feathers

of the  throat       which seeks

another



Danica Colic teaches at Hunter College, where she also received her
MFA degree.  Her poems have recently appeared in Terrain.org, and are
forthcoming in Arts & Letters and Pebble Lake Review.

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