No one spoke
Our mouths climbed
to water Further & without a doubt
A geometry unfolded
around us: Squares & squares,
ofs & ofs
A squirt here & there Nothing
left to avalanche
Show-bar tangential octopus
Treble • mumble • tremble
This is when the anti-thesis
of a gulp plays,
the inside of a piano—
shadow tongue
Cotton bursts from coconuts
thinning the air with puffs
to seed by
The sun won’t give us what we
want in good measure; it’s flying
too, after all, vortex to vortex,
…………………….vortex to vortex.
Shira Dentz is the author of five books including the sun a blazing zero (Lavender Ink/Diálogos, 2019) and Sisyphusina (PANK, forthcoming 2020), and two chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press, 2016). Her poems, prose, and visual writing appear in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, Brooklyn Rail, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day Series (Poets.org), and NPR. A recipient of awards including an Academy of American Poets’ Prize, Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem Award, and Poetry Society of America’s Cecil Hemley Memorial Award, she currently serves as Special Features Editor at Tarpaulin Sky and lives and teaches in upstate NY.
