from Antediluvian Sonnets
Remember when tracing each letter forestalls
A comely race in favor of trust
That there is no 'where' to be oneself
Hand written as if by another eclipse
Viewing machine gold top of teapot sailed
Remnant of anxious gesticulations
And what will a body be
I'm putting off my own dying for a while
Now there's a first spine
No quotidian sounds could park
A room where 'once' closes a door
Floorboards memorize sounds so as to think
I must have thoughts not related to dying
To obsess over a thing yet never contend
Laynie Browne is the author of seventeen collections of poems, three novels, and a book of short fiction. Her recent books of poetry include: Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter 2023), Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar 2023), Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox 2023), and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (Wave Books, 2022). Her work has appeared in journals such as Conjunctions, A Public Space, New American Writing, The Brooklyn Rail, and in anthologies including: The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press), The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, UK), and Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (W.W. Norton). Her writing has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Catalan. She co-edited the anthology I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel (Nightboat). Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. She teaches Creative Writing, and coordinates the MOOC Modern Poetry at the University of Pennsylvania.
