Lisa Fishman
From Current
Questions about snakes were you dreaming
the night-flecked grass and the snake
under the line, under the sheets hung on the line
Were you in the grass barefoot in the night between
one tree
said nothing
heard
A cloud fell down
on the roof of the barn
Was it very many
days like that
Volcano made 2 boys
pour vinegar over baking soda
every time it was summer and when it was other
flew away
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Here yellow mouse
I have a black hat
and the hoop was gold, being pushed with a stick by a girl
through a sunfield on the eyelids in a moving train
Oh my dress
is not my dress
I like your song
I am stung
by a yellow jacket in the Chevrolet
and wish you were
my one true love
I have a friend
the Tilt-a-Whirl
in Orfordville, said Bobby Ross
at the beauty shop—he has three hands
for braiding hair in seven strands; will take two months
to sculpt a ship on someone’s head
Here 11
kinds of kale
have insect lace around the edges
The darkest green becomes you
house in the forest, cat on the counter
______________________________________
Insects are in sections, noticed Aristotle
A worm came out of the table made of apple wood, wrote Thoreau
Too much grass in my eye to see well—there go the lanterns
you can take apart
Relation of part to whole makes the in-sect body and its name
Dear Freund
don’t know about the Sandman or the miniature drummer
but is a “round chisel” really a “gouge”
These are pears, said Augustine, that were not mine
nor the ribbon Rousseau’s
Our dog Pearl
ate the flesh off a pig’s skull
in the whitening sun
You were saying, knives and grass?
A tree was felled at a slight angle
(held at one end by its own branches), and the hewer walked first up
and down . . .
The same axe was used for both scoring and hewing!
This process seems difficult but it was fast.
Also, there is E. W. asking of stars, some open shirts
at the market, speaking of bones, and the radish man’s
vegetable form of the rose
______________________________________
Fastening
the wind to the shape of the wind
the wind to the turn of the wind
the corn grows in corners, in squares
the roads too
In a fell swoop the school came down
the mind at fault, the bricks
could be pictured there
Had been looking around in the time
around the time, may want to say chime
or the name of the cat’s Tom Horne In the Chanterelles
the fluted mushrooms—nothing known
to be that orange
Often in love
with two or more guests in attendance,
the field has a particular, imaginary charge
my dear
The foxtail by the road resembles foxes’ tails specifically but briefly
in a light also fox-colored, didn’t mean
to write it down
______________________________________
There were a few sentences but they did not cross
your mind at the base of your spine
They floated by
the bus you carried to the airport
& walked away, carrying only
your face in their hands
It had been gently removed
At the start of summer
dark comes from the ground and wettens
the air so socks don’t dry where they fell from the line
in the general lack of clarity about the sun’s force
at the end of the day
There are a few sentences waiting around
the path from garden to house in a small town entirely
lit up by the glowing rear-ends of fireflies, and in the category
of that which illuminates number also desire, the anti-shadow
falling simply across
Lisa Fishman is the author most recently of The Happiness Experiment and has two new collections forthcoming: Current (Free Verse Editions) and Flower Cart (Ahsahta). She also has two chapbooks newly or soon available: Lining (Boxwood Editions) and at the same time as scattering (Albion Books). She lives with her family in Madison and Orfordville, Wisconsin and directs the poetry program at Columbia College Chicago.