Press 1



Poetry by
Rebecca Guyon

elongation gone wrong by Denise Scicluna
elongation gone wrong by Denise Scicluna

Brocaded


Your bready eyes would float
if I threw you in this pond.

The koi circling, sucking you in
with tunnel mouths.

Who will touch me then?

The garden heaves us onto a screen –

remember that little Japanese painting?

The clawing wave, the mountain
under grip

men rowing and sliding
unaware of being carved.



Against Time and Place


Here you forget
there is a morning.

Come back.
Stand with me.1

You can’t feel the rain
when it curves.2

I promise.
Here you forget

morning means
to slosh and roll,3

to move somewhere.
That you owe.4

Here, at last, I begin.


1 Imagine us on a bluff. A steep bank, not a betting man’s lie.
2 Arching rain.
3 We grow in the stomach, in spittle and acid.
4 When you fall for a bluff, a steep bank or a lie.




Most poems usually start with sound—a phrase, word, rhyme, etc.—and grow from there as ideas attach to the initial disruption, sort of like how crystals and lint balls form. Then the revisions start.