PoetryMagazine.com

Forrest Gander

USA


Forest Gander Photo by Gaily Romero.

Forrest Gander has degrees in geology and English literature. His recent books include the novel As a Friend, the (just-released) book of poems Core Samples from the World, and the translation Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho (PEN Translation Prize Finalist), all from New Directions.  A United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow, Gander is recipient of fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim, Howard, and Whiting foundations. His forthcoming titles include Watchword, a translation of Pura López Colomé’s Villaurrutia Prize-winning poetry and Spectacle & Pigsty, a co-translation of poems by Kiwao Nomura. Gander teaches at Brown University.

 

 

Anniversary

Not be known always 
by my wounds, I buried melancholy’s larva

And followed you.  I gathered myself
Like the dusk 
to the black tulips of your nipples.  (Tulips Tulips)
For seven days we locked the door
we scoured the room with bird’s blood.
And for a little while
In the hollow where your throat rose
From between your splendid clavicles  (Rose Rose),


Our only rival was music.
The piano of bone-whiteness.
Nor did the light subside.  But deepeningly
Contracted. 
The rawness of the looking.
The quiver.

 

 

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© Copyright, 2011, Forrest Gander.
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