A poem by Maureen Alsop

Here is some more great work from our readers at the upcoming Augury Books & Friends offsite AWP reading/shindig in Seattle. The reading will be at Noble Neon, 3130 Airport Way S on Friday, February 28th from 7:30 until we all feel like going back to our hotels. If you’ll be in Seattle, please join us! Today’s poem is by Maureen Alsop and appears in her book Mantic which we were happy to publish last year.

Photo by Dave Bledsoe of FreeVerse Photography

GYROMANCY

divination by walking around a circle of letters until dizzy you fall down on the letters or in the direction to take

So you go wither. Go muscled in foxglove. So the surface of passionflower’s scent known

to the lungs will be touched by the mouth. So a camera’s song leans

over the guardrail. So the graffiti of circles. So lexicon is devoured by chalk

in the grassland. So omega. So bilge. So yesterday the tradition of order was left

to the entangled hawfinch. So I refused. So I am not a lady. Not your supper jug. Your

hunt of her. So dumpling, who’s your fried chicken? Even in neon-fragment. Even in

mastic-erotic-red. Your taste of me dispensed. So inconsolable keystrokes do not

withdraw from honesty, as honesty is in itself inconsolable.

So found I was without you. I do not remember how you left. Transparent, history

steeped in your head. So I held my finger to the small

blossoms of your eyelids. So I told the sun

to go. And there it spread. So flagstone. So eaglet.

Maureen Alsop, author of Mantic, available to order here, has new poems appearing at Watershed Review, Citron Review and ditch.