Poetry — January 7, 2013 10:50 — 0 Comments

ODE TO MY MAGPIE – Paulann Petersen

whose light is a sun and a darkness

blaze-bright, oiled shadow

the iridescence that floats

each surface

whose appetite is meat-ready, whose hunger

grinds to a halt, everything stalled

in the face of such craving

whose dreams are each an orange

pulled loose from its skin, unwound

from the lazy-susan of doubt

whose malice is magnet to drift and chaff,

malignant cross-hatches

blotting me out

whose slippage is slack, lackadaisical

doozie, the smallest sweetheart chute

letting me out

whose lexicon skews sideways

across the page margin to margin—

the white of margin, the black of ink—

my magpie dishing it out

Bio:

Paulann Petersen is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University whose poems have appeared in many publications including Poetry, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, and Wilderness Magazine. She has four chapbooks--Under the Sign of a Neon Wolf, The Animal Bride, Fabrication, and The Hermaphrodite Flower. Her first full-length collection of poems, The Wild Awake, was published by Confluence Press in 2002. A second, Blood-Silk, poems about Turkey, was published by Quiet Lion Press of Portland in 2004. A Bride of Narrow Escape was published by Cloudbank Books as part of its Northwest Poetry Series in 2006. Kindle was published by Mountains and Rivers Press in 2008. Her latest book, The Voluptuary, was recently published by Lost Horse Press.

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What am I?

Bioluminescent eye
That sees by the shine
Of its own light. Lies

Blind me. I am the seventh human sense
And my stepchild,
Consequence;

Scientists can't find me.

Januswise I make us men;
Glamour
Was my image then—

Remind me:

The awful fall up off all fours
From the forest
To the hours…

Tick, Tock: Divine me.

-- Richard Kenney

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