Books
and Anthologies:
While
Light Is Built
The
Deer
Autumnal:
A Collection of
Elegies (anthology)
Connecting Lines:
New Poetry from Mexico
(anthology)
Collaborations:
The Deer
(broadside with Paul Mirocha)
Outside my
window
(poem on glass with Eric Magrane)
Individual Poems:
“Crying
For Salt” and “Phosphorus”
in EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts
“The Deer” Kore Press
“A Sound Like Acid”
Slipstream
19
_______
Wendy Burk
Poem for X and Y
… from X to Z my Y
will not seem misleading.
— Tedi López Mills, “Triple Absurd”
Today I was thinking
what X said to our friend Y
when a raven landed in a tree
and began running through its repertoire of calls.
I couldn’t see it well
so I put on my glasses:
it was larger than I’d thought
the gloss on its feathers came from the feathers
and also from the rising sun.
I was thinking about our friends
one dead, one still alive,
then I dressed in the cold
and watched the raven
effortlessly communicating,
a dream of communication
since I did not know the language
and the message was not for me.
The Mountain
If I were a rock
I would live
for millions of years.
Disease and war
would not trouble me,
my human kindred
I would see
as they see flowers.
When I hike
in the mountains,
so weak,
so hopeless,
they rustle
that I’m a fool,
I should have stayed.
But I stepped out
of the mountain,
I became human,
to love you.
That’s why I’m here.
Meditation
for the imprisoned
We humans
will endure
a while yet
and while
we endure
we will have
songs
and story.
I used
to worry
we’d go
extinct
while I was
young
now
I expect
to go
first.
At least
I’ve known
overwhelming
love—
call it
anguish
fancy
or delight
it is a
fact
a marrow
it’s what
we’re
made of—
and in
the end
it is what
the x-rays
the satellites
and the
blindness
of night
reveal.
