2 December 2003 | Vol. 3, No. 4
Straw
Not hay. Too singular. Not chaff, not grain. Something Pre-Socratic about its attraction to living heat, stable dung. Not lace. Not grass-whistle, reed-moan. Not, not: insistent, but you don't want it in the house. No belief, no growth. No love. You've seen the photograph taken after a tornado. A spike of straw sticks out both sides of a telephone pole, driven through, lodged. Not broken.
About the author:
Mark Cunningham has poems in recent or forthcoming issues of Practice, Parcel, and Dusie. A chapbook, Second Story, is on the Right Hand Pointing site. Tarpaulin Sky Press will be bringing out a book tentatively titled Body Language, which will be a sort of diptych containing two collections, one titled Body (on parts of the body) and one titled Primer (on numbers and letters).
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Mark Cunningham at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 3, No. 4, where "Straw" ran on December 2, 2003. List other work with these same labels: poetry, prose poem.
