JOSEPH MASSEY ~

Blinds





To listen

is to see



when the light

is a thing



felt in the ear —

it rings



you awake.




~






A dream's jagged

remains, what

morning absorbs.



Light, only light,

in place of nothing

left to remember.




~






Cliff face

shaded in

April snow

that fell

for an hour

overnight.



~





Off the highway

a stand of birch slants



above a vernal pool.

Sight slows to hold



flaked white

raked through



a stretched wreck of landscape.





~





A tree as thin

as your wrist



sprays

from the split



in a river rock.




~






A flag's reflection

dents the

water,



blurs

the debris,

mostly leaves.




~






When shadow

ingests shadow



and road clatter

thins into crickets.



When the notebook's

margins are lost



and language

sprawls. When



windows turn

brown, vacant



in their glare.





~





I return

to my body



attached to

a long vowel



stretched

between us.





________________
Joseph Massey
A New Silence
Shearsman Books
2019

HANNE BRAMNESS ~

 

Paul Klee pictures
                   _______________



Sketch of a street in a town



The man's fine limbs

black lines

       running from

     bone to muscle

plaster is tendons

          tension is stone







Vor dem Schnee



I have seen the kingdom of

air so stiff

           darken and

the trees

so wild in the wind

                      continuous

    one line only

and softer colours

   before the snow

fell







The thirty-six hours before the air is softened by

snow  

       An ice lake

       a day

       clear and grey



Pictures look at us from that

painter's workshop

                      the park resembles Van Gogh

resembles what we see when we

                              look back







Gate of the deserted garden



Turn

    black earth     red earth

    learn to love

                  a human  animal  vegetable world

with the uproar of

       death




__________________

Hanne Bramness
Salt on the eye
Shearsman Books
2007