Only The Result OfBy Andrea Moorhead
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hallucinations when I’ve been walking too far and the path seems uneven sparkling wavering and there isn’t any light out here, eyes sparkle and the thin gleam of teeth bouncing off and sun stars and rain, you haven’t seen this before, have you, and the other night we went way beyond the edge of rock, the sudden and precipitous even though you said it didn’t matter and the sheer force revealed nothing, but I recall the weight of the drop and the weight of the wind and the sudden drop in pressure but you kept on talking as if and always and these hallucinations began far before that and the night wind curled insidious and this was the time I had to describe minutely, even though I couldn’t recall whether or not the teeth had blue veins or cosmic or if the stars concealed around your throat were only the result of and then again I could never be sure.
Certain ChoresBy Andrea Moorhead
Just a minute! I took out the tiny blue flowers and scattered them high on the hill. You requested nothing less, following the worn rut of the sheep, outlandish sunflowers barring the way. And the soil was loose silt star-studded particles that I wiped from my face, left on my clothes as a trail sun tired and worn as if eons were hooked to each step up the hill. Just a minute! I took out the apple cores and dumped them on the back compost. You said it wasn’t necessary or critical that I do that, but I knew the night would be long and cold and rain could move in again or the stars shatter or the lights dim somewhere along the line. And the pail handle clanked. Cascades along the spine. Someone else behind and the night murmuring all along the way.
Passing ByBy Andrea Moorhead
Controversy is never easy and the slate dump is high on the hill, shaded by hemlock where the rock pulls back and roots gnarl around the night. Someone persists up there, someone can’t ever go to sleep; someone is following the ridge again, holding a lamb or a swift, maybe a dove overhead and the light is uncertain, flickering lamps below the horizon, another house while the storm begins and the back walk leads to the edge of the road, twisting and turning under the root-grown slate, the fallen bricks, the heavy gleaming panes of glass.
Andrea Moorhead was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1947. Editor of Osiris and translator of contemporary Francophone poetry, Moorhead publishes in French and in English. Poems and translations have appeared in journals such as Abraxas, Indefinite Space, The Bitter Oleander, Phoenix, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Ginosko. Poetry collections include From a Grove of Aspen (University of Salzburg Press), The Carver’s Dream (Red Dragonfly Press), and À l’ombre de ta voix (Le Noroît). Translations include The Edges of Light (Hélène Dorion, Guernica Editions), Night Watch (Abderrahmane Djelfaoui, Red Dragonfly Press), and Dark Menagerie (Élise Turcotte, Guernica Editions, 2014).
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