Mark Jarman’s latest collection of poetry is Epistles (Sarabande Books, 2007). Sarabande Books will publish his new and selected poems, Bone Fires, in 2011.
He is Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. ---------
Endmills
Night likes a lot of stars but can live without them.
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The leaf is made for light, the tree for gravity.
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When you buy barbed wire, don’t use it for anything else.
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The stoic gloats over his barnacle collection.
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The angel stays the hand, but not the knife.
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You’ll change before the one you’re waiting for changes.
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A really happy memory still sparkles with fool’s gold.
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It is hard to leave a revery. Even harder to return.
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A sad memory, like an owl pellet, is a little wad of bones and teeth.
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All the stars are visible from Planet Failure.
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The morning shower lasts longer on the pavement than on the lower back.
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A star hangs over every birth and cowshed.
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Contentment hangs a trapeze in her door.
Lunesta
When the old poet heard how, in the dreams
That came with the hypnotic sleeping drug
(Recommended by an insomniac like himself),
All faces were unknown, all places strange,
Nothing repeated a day’s or life’s concerns
Or so it seemed, and that it seemed your dreams
Belonged to someone else, he said, “Sounds great.”
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Photo Credit: Jonathan Rogers