Mark Irwin
Bodice
of a dress and all its tatting
yellows like the unused
invitations. White
clouds, white church, white
dress when they answered each
Will you with Yes, the white continuing
still as each red
mouth pushes into the north of memory. How was it
when she glanced
he would tear
a pelt from the grass and run
like an animal? Now he recedes into the bodiless
forest. Angle
of time long with the sun now entering the woods
like butter, and the words still lifting, muddy
with feeling, and a name, its wind
imbued with autumn.
Again the Rain,
where had the body gone? So many
years. What was the line? “The small rain down
can rain.” Pull all the arrows out of sorrow and you
are left with an old beast. How can
it happen again and again, the bodies leaving? Down,
down. When is a long time. The smell of wet
fir: an old beast yearning for tomorrow.
A Green Wind’s
blowing across the playground.
Across the playground the green wind gathers the bodies
of children. Women and men
gather to watch their children running, gathering
the green wind in their arms, giving
it to one another growing taller, offering it to their parents now
whose green faces lean
down, drinking ravenously there.
Mark Irwin‘s poetry and essays have appeared widely in many literary magazines including The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, New England Review, and The New Republic. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (M.F.A.), he also holds a Ph.D. in English/Comparative Literature from Case Western Reserve University and has taught at a number of universities and colleges including The University of Iowa, Ohio University, University of Denver, University of Colorado/Boulder, University of Nevada, and Colorado College. The author of seven collections of poetry, including Against the Meanwhile, Wesleyan University Press (1989), Quick, Now, Always, BOA (1996), White City, BOA (2000), Bright Hunger, BOA (2004), Tall If, New Issues (2008), and Large White House Speaking, New Issues (2013), he has also translated two volumes of poetry, one from the French and one from the Romanian. His American Urn: New & Selected Poems (1987-2013) will appear in 2015. Recognition for his work includes The Nation/Discovery Award, four Pushcart Prizes, a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, Colorado and Ohio Art Council Fellowships, two Colorado Book Awards, the James Wright Poetry Award, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, and Wurlitzer Foundations. He lives in Colorado, and Los Angeles, where he teaches in the Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature Program at the University of Southern California.