Gentleness

By Aurea Kochanowski

Before the dawn starts stirring far away,

unravelling young clouds and lilac-gold,

I will sit with you awhile.

You,

wet with dreaming,

will talk slowly.

This is ordinary magic,

a transubstantiation,

lead becoming silver becoming light.

The ground receives you like a sister—

there will be roots

that vein down from the spine,

a roll of bones to basalt,

a sacrifice of sight.

You will have rest from breath,

and then, only two memories—

that you once thought yourself a living thing,

and now

you are in the breasts of lorikeets,

the bleed of lilly pillies in the summer,

the whistle of black soil

after rain.

More Remarkable Finds

Bishop Trees

By Aurea Kochanowski

She wants to ask the trees some questions, a solemn synod grown anciently deaf.

By Judith Skillman

Metal handles, large, the scissor for a thigh or a wing, when feathers flew up, sank like wishes, settled on the dirty floors.

By P.J. Blumenthal

Rumors of the existence of a substantial corpus in the poet’s native German, however uncanny, are what motivated an Andean expedition of our own.