2 March 2004 | Vol. 4, No. 1
from Severance Songs
*
I will wander afield as you shall pace a plot
made similar by the action of our actual soles,
treading the salted soil or goodly ice
in the sun's track—a circle—or peeking
through branches for the moon's caul. Myth's made
spurious by our inferred causality—
cells divide wisely, everyone nodding:
it takes two. You were born from habit, formed in
an idyll made for forgetting. Smeared on glass,
desire softens the focus while gray matter
runs into red. It's not a pretty picture
but it's framed nevertheless, firmly fastened
and housel'd to the bitterness of disposition.
Choose light from anyplace but heat must have its source.
About the author:
Joshua Corey is the author of Selah (Barrow Street Press, 2003). "La Famille" is from his forthcoming book Fourier Series, which won the Fitzpatrick-O'Dinn Award for Constrained English Literature and will be published by Spineless Books. He lives in Ithaca, New York and keeps a blog, Cahiers de Corey.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Joshua Corey at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 4, No. 1, where "from Severance Songs" ran on March 2, 2004. List other work with these same labels: poetry, editors' select.
