Lace
by Carol Dorf
(after William Carlos Williams)
Nothing is what they say when they’ve
gone past wish into a kind of blankness
white hole of open time
Our pious suggestions cluster
like overblown chrysanthemums
weighing down their stems
This antidote to desire
to the white field that empties
into a single point
Until context disappears
like overwashed fibers laid out to dry
on brown summer grasses
Each flower’s center
questions color the way in the small
world of moles light is texture
Questions begin before speech,
that inquisitive babble, a small hand
pointing, gesture to the unidentified
When the world held wild and remote,
when the edges of the fields remained
uncultivated for the small creatures
How resilient, a gesture
Carol Dorf’s writing has appeared in Sin Fronteras, Canary, The Mom Egg, Sentence, The Prose Poem Project, Unlikely Stories, Helix, In Posse Review, Poemeleon, Fringe, The Midway, A Cappella Zoo, Feminist Studies, Heresies and elsewhere. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing.
qarrtsiluni 