Dara Wier teaches poetry workshops and form & theory seminars for the MFA Program for Poets and Writers, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her newest work, You Good Thing (Wave Books), is a book of grief-fueled sonnets cast as spells to bring back the dead, lost, misplaced and missing, a fool's quintessential inevitable errand. Her most recent books, both from Wave Books, are Selected Poems and Reverse Rapture, a book-length quasi-narrative recording of the adventures of a band of comrade vagabonds, brothers and sisters, out in a lost world protecting one another. Along with Emily Pettit and Guy Pettit, Wier publishes books, chapbooks, broadsides, and comics via Factory Hollow Press, the publishing aspect of Flying Object, a nonprofit arts laboratory in Hadley, Massachusetts, founded and directed by Guy Pettit in 2010.---------
Burnt Orange Blossoms
Not at all is there this time more or less
Than any other time no matter how or over what
What our words do or say. Which they do
So one almost supposes
They know more than we can say
So tease us, so suppose
How close we sometimes come.
Never not, nearly never, not close enough.
Never close enough.
Sufficiently should we take its course to go
On rivers that are not
There on boats that are not there in clothes
No one can see, with hands alert, hearts so
Porous rivers raid them for relaxation purposes.
Thanks All the Same
If I turned myself into a magical quasi mysterious orphan
I could tell for you everything worth telling, about my story,
About us for all time, for you, where you'll be going.
It would be like being a born crown maker in a place
With no need of crowns. Animals would not be afraid
Of us if you could go ahead & make the world as you wish
It was, you may as well, why wouldn't you do this----
Why miss this chance. There would be satellite pictures
Of you at night, these will seem more true than everything
That's come before. If you entertain an idea of including
Everything what's the appeal? That's just one choice made
Once. On the other hand if you leave out a lot, choice has
Many chances and leading to the possibility that you will
Find, faithful, loyal, stable, friend, a plainer will to survive.