2 March 2004 | Vol. 4, No. 1
from Severance Songs
*
Stand back! Back to the potter's field,
dark hillocks signifying darkly
what glares in the redrawn screen.
Fixed now these voices we've built upon—
their dream (Traumwerk), their disorder—post us.
O glimmer, red raw screen, the face an anterior
intruder, pressing wetly at the back of my skull.
Terrible to outlive meaning, pater.
Terrible to die without finishing, mater.
The mother that I read—words, words.
The pattering of a little feat.
Beware Kinderdichtung: enfin les enfants
rise here and there, winking nightlights, shaping
the terrorscape our bodies have buried.
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.
