Carolyn Guinzio is the author of Quarry (Parlor Press, 2008), and West Pullman (Bordighera, 2005), as well as the chapbook Untitled Wave (Cannibal, 2009). Originally from Chicago, she lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
from Untitled Wave
Slowly, from the center, it breaks down. As if a tree could choose not to live,
choose not to accept the rain. Gravity, grave, what holds you down.
What rolls down darkening slopes. As if the earth could refuse the rain.
Looking up, I can see only as far as the forces holding me down will allow.
The eyes draw down, draw around. We can't turn away from each other.
---
When everything else has fallen, no letting go of a great drawn gasp will release
from the tree the fragment of fabric torn away, tossed into the tree to prove
there was no line between the spheres, that whatever I might reveal to you
should be out in the dead grass even as a frost descends. This was how
we came to be walking to town through the woods in the night, bitten and briar
scratched, stopping to ground those minutes in grave descriptives of what endures.