War 3

This one’s

                        not talking.

Cyclops’

                   optic

blast:

   one thing

was clear—

      this motherhood thing

         fierce as earth was not going to go away—

views sited more views in gravitational fields of the page

                      the whiteness of the page seeping through or up

   so as to not get ahead of the perceptions––

egret in green smoky grass leaking copper

           vulva cloud takes to the tree––

If today you die If tomorrow brings lyric

         If lyric is new fossil energy

Rain comes down the tree

                                   permitted, unpermitted meanings scratched into tree

Love wants a beginning

          The deepest letters

sitting a bit deranged alongside the more faint ones

                                        in the bark discussing

what time

If today you die If tomorrow brings lyric

if lyric is new fossil

we have the energy

War 4
War 10
If we are living in a time living

Gillian Conoley is a poet, editor, and translator. The author of ten collections of poetry, including Notes from the Passenger (Nightboat, 2023) and A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New and Selected Poems (Nightboat, 2019) Conoley received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and a Fund for Poetry Award. Conoley has taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Denver, Vermont College, Tulane, and Sonoma State University. A long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she is editor of VOLT magazine. Her translations of three books by Henri Michaux, Thousand Times Broken, appearing in English for the first time, is with City Lights. Conoley has collaborated with installation artist Jenny Holzer, composer Jamie Leigh Sampson, and Butoh dancer Judith Kajuwara. https://www.gillianconoley.com

Annulet

War 3