I heard the house around me
like an old familiar body,
a shell of shine and damp.

In bones I moved through its rooms,
through storms, second thoughts.
I watched it shift, separate in seams—

wall to floor to ceiling. It settled me.
Shifted from sight, from seeming,
I lived from phrase books and fading air.

Unpacking those hours,
I remembered their gifts, and the work
that made me: mixing flour, mending home,

putting words by. Now I am
wind-grown, gone from that grave,
though in dreams its dark pulse

still slips through mine and I
step back through its rain and ruin,
sure of my place each time.

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Jacquelyn Pope’s first collection of poems, Watermark, was selected by Marie Ponsot for the inaugural Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize and was published by Marsh Hawk Press in 2005. Her poems, essays and translations have appeared in journals and newspapers in the United States and Europe. Her work has received the José Marti Prize, and awards from the Academy of American Poets and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
 

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Note: Previously published as "In Time" in the spring 2004 issue of The Southern Review; title changed to "From a Crooked Wall" when published in Pope's book Watermark.
 

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summer 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue