“Fence,” Simone Kearney (2013), oil on canvas. 22 x 30 inches (image courtesy the artist)
Milk to the land whitens
A horse might surely tread A path
The wheat wet A shadow-sun
A path might find a horse’s tread
Did I not promise, rise to this?
The sun red
The bell escaping
I am not surely dead
The carriage halts, the morning breathes
The carriage shakingly aware
The carriage halts upon the ground, wheels stir without a sound
The carriage drives from day to night, from dawn to dawn, a burning light
The carriage gathers thoughts lifts them to the sky as birds
The sky as birds the carriage leads, the sky as birds the carriage leaves
What became one became none
again and again an eye spots an eye
again and again a sea cries to sea
Oh are you near
who might be listening
again and again place the word to the air
just there
again and again the carriage will stop
and she will listen
Rest in its deepest states
we name slumber
And the field covers her
again and again
And if you and you are here then say itsay it
I am but one and you are many
Lights in the day ringing
And a gate might open
To a gate
Might open
* * *
Jennifer Firestone was raised in San Francisco and now lives in Brooklyn. She is an Assistant Professor of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College (The New School). Her books include Gates & Fields (Belladonna*), Swimming Pool (DoubleCross Press), Flashes (Shearsman Books), Holiday (Shearsman Books), Waves (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), from Flashes (Sona Books), snapshot (Sona Books), and Fanimaly (Dusie Kollektiv). Firestone is the recipient of the 2014 Marsh Hawk Press Robert Creeley Memorial Prize.
Gates & Fields is available to preorder from Belladonna* Collaborative and will be released May 15, 2017.