5 poems
from Kos
that sun was not
one to recollect
that blue lies
by multiple
pre-dispositions
no use to me, the thought
divided, as one reasons, all the more
the world, of
eyes, intent to soften, to clear the facts that aren’t
made to wait, the eye softened, a witness for the cloud’s
intent, not yet cloud and
thank you
space
in order
for the afternoon
to be
root, for example
ensemble of sail to skin the name is unfinished
growing in the wild and “the rosy dream alone” you
say
the inversion of the image
in its page the alternate of thorn
a nest below this figure, more than in their smiles, false if –
in the passing of time – merely
plum, white tresses and white
garland
and one is already made, cannot
go back and spill the water, and
at least I
don’t have letters; however,
as you say in Spanish the seeds are so
sensual the asylum notes rewinding
dream of growing in the wild, and lonely for
you, said I
The sky is the paper
below which plum
branches
plum branches in the white mountains
the page you want to be
alone
but as you said, the seed
of the book is
grass will come to light, so a shroud, bereft
his sail
except
for a sprint of air
the world
as when
it rose accomplished
a bright sphere to retrace the body
now become a stone in water
below the fold in paper
to thus lament is otherwise bereft
and you are present, which means
the beam from dark season, stranded floor
a conjecture has been present, the ‘almost’ of the blush. Most
leaves mean you have your rose. Windless you have,
water-resilient, diurnal black
not knowing, or through the last lap of the radiant
through
swift rue
my corpse, that I lament
lament the sea rose to cleanse the air, in that it is
Steven Salmoni’s recent publications include A Day of Glass (Chax Press, forthcoming 2019), the chapbook Landscapes, With Green Mangoes (Chax Press, 2011), poems in Nerve Lantern, Fact-Simile, Spinning Jenny, Versal, Sonora Review and Bombay Gin, and articles in The Salt Companion to Charles Bernstein, Studies in Travel Writing and The Journal of Narrative Theory. A selection of his work was included in the anthology, The Sonoran Desert: A Literary Field Guide (U of Arizona Press, 2016). He received a Ph.D. from Stony Brook University and is currently the Department Chair of English at Pima Community College, Northwest Campus in Tucson, AZ. He also serves on the Board of Directors for POG, a Tucson-based literary and arts organization that promotes an annual reading series.