seekers after gold dig up much earth and find little —Joan Retallack poem for the next ice agepoem where no one wears black to the funeral(s)poem for the fact that weather does not ask permission to touch youpoem using specific names for all the people we’ve known who have died before turning twenty-onepoem watching you …
First: fervor for swampland / then hospital socks / Gessoed floors / like planets of milk— / he is dreaming of swimming / and running / at once / He is endlessly / about to / Sometimes predreams / are the wildfires in Georgia that year / the pond cypress / & bladderwort / aspirin-white …
(To use the PDF embedder to see all pages of the poem, use the arrows on the bottom left-hand side.) Text: I gather the words like / blooms. / I gather the words. Like shards / of / a missile. I gather the words like / my / grandmother. My grandmother is / shards / …