Annie Finch is the author of five books of poetry: Spells: New and Selected Poems (2012); Calendars (2003), shortlisted for the ForeWord Magazine Poetry Book of the Year award; Eve (1997); The Encyclopedia of Scotland (2004), and a translation of the Complete Poems of Louise Labé (2006). She has also written for music and opera collaboration and has edited and written a number […]
HLF, August 8, 1918—August 22, 1997 “Bequeath us to no earthly shore until Is answered in the vortex of our grave The seal’s wide spindrift gaze towards paradise.” —Hart Crane, “Voyages” “If a lion could talk, we couldn’t understand it” —Ludwig Wittgenstein Under the ocean that stretches out wordlessly past the long edge of the […]
For Glen Come to me with your warning sounds of the tender seas. Come to me with your warning sounds of the tender seas. Move me the way the seas’ warm sea will spend me. Move me the way the seas’ warm sea will; spend me. Move your sea-warm come to me; will […]
Maple leaves turn black in the courtyard. Light drives lower and one bluejay crams our cold memories out past the sun, each time your traces come past the shadows and visit under my looking-glass fingers that lift and block out the sun. Come—I’ll trace you one final autumn, and you can trace your […]
With my dark eyes open, I search into the dark for a reassurance to soothe me like a look. No beam will sink or angle, no slow new mineral drip through the circling ceiling, no change of quiet drop. A womb will throw me outward (unbreakably deep kiss), inhospitable, solid, into no circumference, […]
My wild indigo dusky wing my mottled, broad-wing skipper, a sleepy, dreamy dusty wing, flying through my night. My northern, southern, cloudy wing, my spring azure, my crescent pearl, a silver-spotted, sweet question mark, sleeping in my sky. A tiger swallowtail, harvester, moving through my hours, an eyed brown in the redwing dark, […]
My body thickens in a stem climbing aloud to keep you here. My belly thickens like a stem, my belly is tethered by your days. Come in, come in, my strong darling. I’m still a pane of airy glass. My breasts go heavy to meet you here. My body turns […]