~unremembering

this you should know

 

it’s almost march
& I’m becoming bluer

 

as restless as a verb
forgotten by the wind
too sacred for
the telling

 

how little I remember
of months with no corners

 

the similarities of secondhand
smoke
& shadows sewn
into scars

 

this naked wreckage

 

my eyes, full of water
full of ink

 

 

lah 2.20.17 ©®

~rote

it’s winter & the night smells of smoke
& ache

I’m alone
in a house full of black ink
a thousand miles from here

searching for something that belonged to you
older than an apology
something quiet
like the cadence in caesuras of
february’s shifting snow

as white as an empty page

it’s always winter & I am not this

when I measure the sound of clouds
moving their darkness like yesterday’s words
& when I measure the thickening air
between us by months
by my shadow’s long bones
sleeping in a bed of separation

it’s the same way I assemble assonance
in a small room with small walls
as it calls out metaphors
until it echoes in my ribs, ghosting
my voice

it’s still winter & I remember forgetting

I’m growing older
colder between these sheets
writing you in this poem I pretend to be
& trying to name this grief
lah 2.11.17 ©

~understanding the ramifications of indiscretion

x.
sometimes everything is missing
something
xx.
perhaps night is weak

always falling

even the moon slides away to
soft edges of darkness
xxx.
in the cold awakening
another tired day scatters sunlight
on the susquehanna

old river, relaxed
against colloquial curves

a peculiar musky scent slips the water
unaware

a red-tailed hawk in flight
talons tear through the blue
iv.
sometimes anything is something
v.
the soul is fashioned from
versed incantations
and dots of color
deeper than the self

a simile of purge and cleanse
like benediction after sin
vi.
an aging ash outgrows its roots
what was will cease to be
this slow demise of fading leaves
the consequences to the tree
vii.
sometimes something that’s everything
is nothing at all
By Lori Hamilton, © 2015, All rights reserved.

~breaking bed

loosely strung silence
canopies the absence found in
a familiar room

observe the detail taken to stitch a bed
spread of uncertainty

measure the seam’s strength
when stretched more than a decade deep
the same distance found between
two bodies
the way it hems a hollowness heavier than
our own breathing

notice how the fabric frays
splits the darkening air

curses flung about like damp feathers
like disoriented shadows, framed

and lengthening the wall
By Lori Hamilton, © 2015, All rights reserved.

~exhaling mindclouds

fingers spread words coming late

to the page, drawn on

like cigarettes from fourth stage

lungs

a slight breath measured in winter air

or the pale laced waiting of vows

suspended

as if an untold sequence of pauses

attempts to hold up an aging sky

the slow fall of an intoxicated horizon

always twelve steps away

unwilling to find the calming light

in an anonymous

garden

to wash jaundice from dilated irises

lah 7.13.15

By Lori Hamilton, © 2015, All rights reserved.

~umbrage

she can’t recall the waiting
or the lengthening sky
her sorrow drapes awkwardly
from three corners of a quiet moment

the ghostly ache of a stradavarius
keeps time with turbulence
couples the sounding ruins
like a narrative of vultures
burning sermons to lesser bodies

her crops die in the fields
withered roots reject the grounding

and from the darkening comes
an assemblage of words she hasn’t
written yet

a poem untold
half-remembered

lah  7.11.15

~one

what i know of time, i learned from
you

perhaps winter has
too many midnights
darkness is complicated, always but
inches away
the clockface, a blank page

after a dozen decembers, the earth still
tilts
and even in the soft grey snow
the sun is too warm

home is just walls, holding back
the cold

lah  7.10.15

~casualties of lake effect

 

 

it’s a common despair

inertia of a numb decision
and how aggressively it spreads
like january sniffles
or sprawling wind

trees gesture in their standing
orphaned by the green
blanketed with ghostsmoke

leaf fall comes shivering
the underneath goes still  

 

©  lori hamilton

~notes on unknowing

 

 

  inevitably there came

  an interruption

  and in a childhood autumn

  the appalachians fell

  from blue

  thundered upon themselves

  the way a volcano vents

  its frustration

  as if to end the heated anger

               and begin again

  I was a stunted sunflower

  unaligned in this situation

  hanging horizontal, hoping

  to catch what was left

  of the setting sun

  and october pressed against me

              like salted clay

  copper melted to forge 

  those long forgotten rivers

  as I finger-sieved foothills

  destroyed in the crumble

  hands troweled through

  a month of midnights

  to seed an uneven wind

               with birthroot and 

                backbone

  while I pried apart the shadows

  nailed to fence-posts

  ages buried beneath crabgrass

               and sage

  I waded deep hours

  with no gravity

  waited

  for winterlong breaths

  to purify the air

  to baptize me in snowmelt

  and regrow my mountains

  ©  lori hamilton