Category: Karen Volkman

by Karen Volkman

The throat-flute uttering its constant note

of claim and name and wake and never-same

and nuanced cadences of sate, remote

days translated into a breathing frame,

knows its viewless voice is future’s lend,

surpassing present where it grows and dwells

momently, glancing vocable, to spend

blooming fullness as it spills and swells

in the air, ear, othered. Heard, is it the same?

Future-fathered, present-mothered—instrument

of mute contingencies its songs declaim

note by note by stopless increment

in the sounding, silenced. Audible degree

nights the note that lets mind’s nighttime see.

from NominaFind it in the library

Copyright © BOA Editions, Ltd 2008
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of BOA Editions LTD.

by Karen Volkman

I asked every flower I met

had they seen my palest friend.

The one called world-without-end

shook from its august arrête.

“A blink in the dark, pauvrette,

this business of breach and mend.”

Then to search is only to spend?

A bier in the air, oubliette?

“Fertility’s fraud is forget.

The soil that strains in the eye

breeding nuance, nascence, name

re-blooming a world that will die.

Each grain is a doorless my:

To search is only to same.”

from NominaFind it in the library

Copyright © BOA Editions, Ltd 2008
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of BOA Editions LTD.