Steven Salmoni

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.