Even the Alphabet
Consider s
who stands beside another, close as possible,
c who will not abandon k at the end,
no matter how thick the attack,
q who breaks the trail for u, who without u
can hardly manage what is required—
and consider how letters live in the body,
play in it, against the back of the teeth,
in the wet active tongue,
and make the lips to part, to close.
Consider how necessary silence is,
coupled with constancy,
how silence can make a syllable benign,
so that it does not shout to show valor,
but softly stands in place
and changes everything,
as does k who, though it can speak,
kneels before n and says nothing, nothing.
Also published in Beside You at the Stoplight (The Backwaters Press, 2010)
Listen My Bearded One
Listen, my broad shoulder, my no-answer answer,
my no mule stubborn as, my forgive me again again,
let’s stay with this cross-country we’ve begun,
this night train, this knick knack paddy whack.
I hardly know my own reflection in the window,
I hardly know the name of the next station.
Do you?
After (or because of) the silent treatment
and the same old same old,
but ahead of No Brain Left At All,
let’s fall together in our sleeper car.
Let’s not solve everything.
Beyond us, beyond this short-term ride
lies the country of the dark.
Also published in Beside You at the Stoplight (The Backwaters Press, 2010)
Marjorie Saiser has five collections of poetry, including LOSING THE RING IN THE RIVER (University of New Mexico Press, 2013), which won the Willa Award. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the editors of Prairie Schooner and her work has been published in Rattle, RHINO, Nimrod, Chattahoochee Review, Poet Lore, Poetry East, PoetryMagazine.com, and poetmarge.com.
“Poetry matters in this fractured world. It requires, in both the reading and the writing of it, the act of paying attention to the individual life.”
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