Henry, the World
 

Henry, I’m anxious.
Not yet has the world
been put properly into words

nor the stars
nor the strange way
the maples in your parents’ yard
tease the green
from your eyes.

Henry, last night while you slept
down the hall, I heard the world
round a bend in the river, beyond

the ting of silverware and conversation
as the table in the kitchen
was set below me.

We can’t count on science to set it down
in textbooks. And I fear
we will not find the world
                in the pages of a ladies’ novella

like the one your mother left me
on your sister Martha’s nightstand, where

all night, beside the bed,
a beveled waterglass shattered
the moon into separate syllables.  

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Sarah Sloat grew up in New Jersey. After graduate school, she taught in China for a year cut short by the Tiannanmen Square massacre. Afterwards, she rambled, and has since lived in California, Kansas and Italy. For most of the past 15 years, she’s lived in Germany, where she works for a news agency. Her poems have appeared in Pebble Lake Review, Wicked Alice, Juked and Third Coast. Sarah keeps a blog at http://theraininmypurse.blogspot.com.  

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