Michelle Taransky lives in Philadelphia, where she works at Kelly Writers House, is Reviews Editor for Jacket2, and teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. With her father, architect Richard Taransky, she is the coauthor of The Plans Caution (QUEUE 2007), as well as the author of Barn Burned, Then, selected by Marjorie Welish for the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize (Omnidawn, 2009). Her poems have appeared in publications including Denver Quarterly, VOLT, How2 and New American Writing.
BARN BURNING, AN ECLOGUE
For those who say it is enough
Of the farmstead, not falling
Rain come last to bed and tearing
White sheets into small armies of animals
Where this keeper's concern meets
Old thrasher in the shed
Its keyhole patterned
After a breast and the calling
Filled with response
A response then
Respond, respond with a weed to
The flames stopped to
Track a doe
I don't know how
Barn is like grave
Matter and matters
Like a silo missing its torso the
Barn's reading rooms
Forgetting-weeds mirror what
Was kept in the safe, same as others
Have divorced a few apple trees with no ideas
About red
As if it has two mother
Languages— they are the bad pruners
The unhorse
Crediting the no
BARN BURNED, THEN
The bank,
A teller,
The same figures'
Capacity to chorus, as if
Light was beaten for bread
A confessed wage
Through another
Chance-flood
Broken-necked flicker
Gold pawed labyrinth
Flints of past thresher
Taking brother who is best
At hiding
Writing a statement
To take the barn's place
THEY SOLD THE CALF. THAT FALL
The bank took over. What had been
the farm. The particular
that is described in entry 8. By that year
he was a member. Planning hearings,
writing: museums are translations of field
activities. Letters in response to letters
from architects in alphabetical sequence from
"abaca" to "zinnia." Paid to the family. To raise
native grasses, forests, and appropriate means
for measure. Boundaries should be
inspected. General views included. And the originals,
taken by farmers, working closely with duststorms, shelter,
emergencies arranged in the National Portrait Gallery
by year. By which progress could be the work of the weather
that is labeled "Domestic," indexed by name of the live-
stock responsible for making sugar from cornstalks.
Wild flowers are not documented. In the diseases of the general
the construction is not to be confused with the center, copies of loans
sent after this March are missing. Droughts vary in content. Crops
matter. Each disturbance is responsible. A farmer bearing
his name. On the farm radio program
was the farm. Responsible for planting fall
crops distributed as places. Estimating a fever
to show the extent of the overprinted threats. To form
the plan for breeding grounds. In the home
the home was slaughtered, was divided in two parts:
an experimental laboratory and a speech
made daily. The chronological copies of breakdowns. It describes
many bodies
carried on. This is almost an act. A photograph of prisoners
of war picking peaches.