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Epitaphion

By G.C. Waldrep
Poetry•Vol. XXX No. 1 (Spring 2017)

Rorschach of the swollen creek, marsh-land, undertide,
the lilies anchoring the lower bank hunched into their green
adolescence. Dead-nettle empurpling the freshening fields—
some god is combing this oily wool, has sent his little
kleptomaniacs into the glistering world. Some god’s
hand lies heavy on the molded features of your still face.
A vein beats into the aconite’s egg-cups. We strip it like old ivy
from the mind leaving its trilobites, its fossil signatures.
I hear the sleeping swans in your voice, stains in a gashed
cloth. Spring is a bruise in the body and we live there:
milk globe, pelvis, hairstreak feathering into this vertical life,
roan oak or some private dancing, Susanna
and her retinue of flesh. Like this, you said, placing my hands
where you wanted them, where you said they ought to be,
at daybreak now the kestrels from the river scanning
the leafmold, the lathering spring haulm. Like this
I tell my students, arranging their hands beneath the sheet.
You must not read the torn earth like a letter. Try it this way:
color fields unwriting the retina into here and not-here,
emblem and consequence.
The forsythia’s saffron fractals rubble the water.

G.C. Waldrep
G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are a long poem, Testament (BOA Editions 2015), and a chapbook, Susquehanna (Omnidawn 2013). With Joshua Corey he edited The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta 2012). His new collection, feast gently, is due out from Tupelo Press in 2018. He lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.

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