Judith Roitman


SMOKE


smoke into lungs
               chopsticks held high 

                                                            lungs devour lungs:
                                                                           black box of extinction 

dog’s eye dog’s lungs
                                             tube to nose 
                                             nose to rhythm

and skin
               (no disintegration): 

                                                            hand to hand to hand to hand



WINGS


her wingèd hut: her hollow ship

                                             			seeds closed: entranced
                                                            				children: like rain

         hull deep in woods
         spores closed: waiting

                                                fire: waiting

                    her house:
                                    animals: waiting


THE SORROW CLOWN
      

	her back like mercy
                     sex
	             toes 

	unforgiven
	thoughts: unforgiven
	money: expanding

	hands: splayed
	branched




MOTION


               cumulative motion: unstoppable
               the weight of it:	
                                             floating: discomfort: wanting

               skin: ineffable: close: no stillness

               the spacewalker: arms spread: suit spread
                                                                                            rotation

                                             gull wings like silk
                                             mouse scurrying for shelter

               the autobahn! the pedestrian!

                              one moment of wind: shards everywhere
                              nothing but shards
				     
                                                            her body: carried
                                                                                          planetary motion



MOON


                              his dead sister
                     
                                                      each eye forgiven:
                                                                        each season 

                              one foot in Antwerp: one foot stolen
                                                                                                against cloud
                                                                                                earth

                              her footsteps: broken 

                              like a boat 
                                                a tree
                                                          white trillium: caught

                              in light

                                            the last grief moon of summer:
                                                                                  head in hands
                                                                  

                              each song: an ocean

Judith Roitman’s books are Roswell (theenk Books) and No Face: Selected and New Poems (First Intensity Press). Her chapbooks include The Boar King (Magnificent Field Press), Provisional (dancing girl press), Slackline (Hank’s Loose Gravel Press), Furnace Mountain (Omerta), Ku: a thumb book (Airfoil Press), and Two: ghazals (Horse Less Press). She has published in a number of journals including Sprung Formal The Rumpus, Human Repair Kit, Horse Less Press, Talisman, YEW, Otoliths, Writing Disorder, E.ratio, the tiny, Equalizer, DREGINALD. She lives in Lawrence KS.

 
 

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