So quiet, seems like everyone’s just forgotten how to do it.
In a mixture of rains, fog, torn pieces of wool,
everyone’s lost their fangs, imagine it, love thy neighbor, love thy
crashed bank marble,
thy fathers and brothers thy mothers in the stars’ cores, thy pearls
on a black dress, a green blouse,
down the pressed trousers,
how in love with you I am, stag, wolf,
a primrose begun near volcanic inactivity, in the flatlands
a weapon a lissome candelabra
left on the bar floor,
and mouthless, only hounds on earth
left to answer when the world calls.
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 longtime 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
