a poem by dan rosenberg

Palisade


Between the trunks,

the shadow suggests



an opening. Her shoulders

are coils wrought



and bound. Ribs

rise, ribs fall. Made



where the sun wasn’t,

she admits a breach:



an aquifer (confined)

expresses pressure.



Inside the borehole,

the ancient water rises.



So many trees

stripped and staked,



lonely as drunks

leaning against each



other. Nevertheless,

her defenses gnarl.



Below, the earth leaking,

an artesian flow.





"Palisade" originally appeared in Salt Hill.

Dan Rosenberg is the author of The Crushing Organ (Dream Horse Press, 2012) and cadabra (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2015). He has also written two chapbooks, A Thread of Hands (Tilt Press, 2010) and Thigh's Hollow (Omnidawn, forthcoming 2015), and he co-translated Miklavž Komelj's Hippodrome (Zephyr Press, forthcoming 2015). His work has won the American Poetry Journal Book Prize and the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest. Rosenberg earned an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Ph.D. from The University of Georgia. He teaches literature and creative writing at Wells College and co-edits Transom.

a poem by dan rosenberg

Serval


Our bed is elevated. The serval hunts
on wires. Breaks open a butterfly. Dust
crushed in a vertical pounce. Lovemaking

on the proscenium. And lovemaking
in the hardware section. Our bed,
strung on wires. Our serval makes

a proscenium of love. We break
open the butterfly with a vertical
crush. Our eyes closed in deep grass

for up to fifteen minutes, the stillness
before the leap. Your paws clamp down.
Break open our lovemaking: the dust

crushes out. What else so honestly
powders itself to our paws? Butterflies,
hunted. Make do with the wares

we have offered each other. We receive
a proscenium closed in deep grass.
Your serval breaks open her hardware,

dusts our bed. And at my pounce
a proscenium closes. Your paws clamp
our bed: a lovemaking. The hunter

sleeps a hunt in our bed. The feline
twitch and flex of hardware. We elevate
our hands, the bed, we hunt the butterfly,

a vertical pounce. This lovemaking
breaks open. What dust crushes out
from us. What dust on wires we are.

What dust so honestly itself in deep grass
for up to fifteen minutes. The eyes clamp
on wires. The butterfly, dust-hunting.

The proscenium closes our lovemaking.
What else on wires, what else breaks
open: the hunter the hunted loves making.





"Serval" first appeared in Conjunctions





Dan Rosenberg's second book of poems, cadabra, is forthcoming in 2015 from Carnegie Mellon University Press. His first book, The Crushing Organ (Dream Horse Press 2012), won the 2011 American Poetry Journal Book Prize. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in jubilat, Salt Hill, Conjunctions, and Blackbird. A PhD candidate at the University of Georgia, he co-edits Transom.

a poem by dan rosenberg

Wax Bird


you have no taste
for news the house
covers you thickly
you look for lift
from here the distant
lover doesn’t offer
a head’s worth of heat
left in your shoulder
candle wax melted
to the table forms
a fat and flightless
bird watching it
your hackles rise
like tiny feathers

*

the t.v. hasn’t spoken
for days and you don’t
believe in channels
the world outside
her thrift of self has
left your empty form
kneeling at the closet
whispering nothing loudly
don’t think the sense
of smell can lace you
to what matters she’s
a false bone wrapped
around your sternum

*

from your window
you see a small bird
suck the sweat
from tiny pebbles
and spit them out
the same pebbles
worried raw
in her silver beak
over and over as if
a piece of stone
could be renewed

from The Crushing Organ (Dream Horse Press).



Dan Rosenberg’s first book, The Crushing Organ (2012), won the 2011 American Poetry Journal Book Prize. His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in jubilat, American Letters & Commentary, and Beecher’s. A graduate student at The University of Georgia, he co-edits Transom.

a poem by dan rosenberg

Beached


What perfect
and speckled battlements—

a thumbprint
is a window

to the child.

A dapple.
What potential—

just lift this
overturned pail

thick with sand.

*

Boring like to make
a hole—in the sun

and hiding
from it, these

glasses darken my vision—

in pursuit
of paradise I’m still.



"Beached" originally appeared in American Letters & Commentary



Dan Rosenberg’s first book, The Crushing Organ, won the 2011 American Poetry Journal Book Prize, and is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press. His poems have appeared recently in several magazines, including Pleiades, American Letters & Commentary, Subtropics, and Third Coast.  A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is currently a co-editor at Transom and a Ph.D. student at UGA in Athens, GA.

a poem by dan rosenberg

Purpose


Giving up on the day, I climb to the roof
and spread-eagle. Birds choose
a representative to peck out my liver,
but I’m not interested in the role.
Go away. The gold capital dome
feeds the clouds like a giant nipple.
The clouds are no single thing.
I’m worried that my blood will go
where it must, completely unaddressed.
How can I be heard inside myself?
The shingles flap like mouths,
pathetic toothless mouths. I want
to cover them all. If I spread myself
thin enough, I can go totally limp
and their charades of speech will move me.
From high above, I might be said to ripple.



"Purpose" originally appeared in Pool.



Dan Rosenberg's poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in several journals, including American Letters & Commentary, Pleiades, Subtropics, and Thermos. His chapbook, A Thread of Hands, is available from Tilt Press. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at The University of Georgia and co-editing Transom.

shoutouts

Good poems:

Peter Balakian: Warhol / Blue Jackie

Kimberly Grey: Modern Sentences

Matthew Hittinger: Blue Gotham

James Hoch: Dust

Rickey Laurentiis: Black Iris & What I Hear in Your Eyes

Dan Rosenberg: What's Owed

Natalie Shapero: Halloween at 21

Bridget Talone: In the Soak

Charles Harper Webb: Winter Song

I also want to check out Lily Brown's new collection Rust or Go Missing.

shoutouts

I love the Brooklyn Museum. Their American High Style exhibition was great to see. I'm still thinking about the 1910 dress above designed by Paul Poiret.

I am so happy that the talented Rebecca Myers and her blog is a finalist to appear in the next issue of Creative Nonfiction. I suggested her entry "Christmas Past" to the editors and alas, out of over 800 submissions, it was one of 19 finalists.

Dan Rosenberg, whose poems were recently featured here, has a new chapbook: A Thread of Hands. Only $8!

A well-written review of George A. Romero's 1977 cult vampire classic Martin from Behind the Couch.

Love these John Woo Star Wars inspired drawings for various menswear lines on Le Chic Batik.

three poems by dan rosenberg

So happy to have these poems from Dan Rosenberg.



The Golem


has come to your
neighborhood.
The golem
scratches the letters
on his head. He has
the fist of nails.
He scrapes
accidental trenches
in himself.
His gloves
have blood
of their own.
His foot
snaps your azaleas;
a freezing sound.
Pie smells
turn to burnt
smells. There is
trembling.
The golem
will not kill anyone
for you, will not
tie a rope
between man
and child’s body.
Where are your dead?
Where did you get
these bodies?
The golem
will let them rot.
His head tilts back.
There is no
Adam’s apple,
his face does not
crack in the sun.
You want to give
him a book. You
want to touch
his cheek. Don’t.
The golem is
clay baked
and coughed into.


--



Eat the Bones of the World


Eat the bones of the world
like an unnatural mouth
in the tricky posture of opening.

The air stains your breathing
with cow manure smell
on a western wind. So stop.

Be no cattle nor cattle hand.
So eat the radiant bones,
the girding of the world.

In the growth of tailored pines.
In the corner cemetery. The road
cut into the bones of the world

so low you drive level
with the dead. You live
downhill from the dead

but they don’t sing to you.
You live downhill from someone
else’s dead and you must

eat the bones of the world
with your last tooth some day.
Some day with both fists

in a pantomime of giddy fire.
Some day you’ll wake up
in the revenant springtime

and eat the unforgiving bones,
morning to marrow, a dog
who licks the whipping hand.

--

First Date as Foucault


The pendulum puddles under
her earlobe, the violent swing
saying something. No, it’s
saying no in horizontal thrust,
but the pendulum shaves light
off its curves like a stream of flint.
I can’t look away. As a child
bowling I’d stare at the sheen
on the lanes, the reason for gliding,
halogen light peeled into strips.
And my friends, half-choked
on French fries, slicking finger-
grease into the balls’ three holes,
hurling them for the bang
and bruise, battered wood, the pin
explosion. I understand reaction
now, but still I am still. Afraid
this date will not end well.

-Dan Rosenberg