Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Twenty-five Spring 2011 |
A flower fingerprints in pollen Henry Shifrin A flower fingerprints in pollen: shadows my shoulders amethyst. A hand of sorts patting hello when I walk with sidewalk, a breeze and the warm breath of magnolias as intimates -- the way waves of television befriend my sleep, wash over my curled shore of knees. My purpled shoulders clarify me among passing bodies and swaying trees; I'm a sentence pruned of modifiers, like a hatless man who only uses the coat rack and perhaps forgets his coat. And lately I've conversed with glass. The movement of my lips is the sweep of hawk wings. Perhaps only in my thoughts, but like the strike of lightning, pollen also has the feel of a god's touch, that the void isn't so empty -- it's a vase on the dinner table our thoughts will fill. |
About Henry Shifrin |