Three Poems

 

Molly Stern

 

 

 

 

cold drop, frozen drop

 

 

establishing the symmetry of solitude

she makes, she gathers, she heaps up

 

the frozen drops of its miniscule structure

 

to measure the geometry of the face

frozen bonds clinging in parallel

 

a routine dip of the palm as it presses closer

along the reflection of crystal capillaries

 

she plots a graph for isolation

 

a net of flat minerals, the close-packed edifice of the macro

in which lies wavelengths, the perfect and complete pattern

 

from the next point to this, the beams converge

shot through, piercing the atoms of the molecule

 

a coherent, spatial arrangement of one’s aloneness.

 

 

 

 

cactus

 

 

evolved leaves push away

ribs and multipetaled flowers

 

long dormancy, and then—transpiration at night

the clouds seeding it with their spherical blood.

 

the globose body is filled with sunken nodes

deep, fertile mounds receiving the tubular ovary

 

thickened, waiting for it to course up

up columnar branches into the cool dark of evening.

 

the shadow of spines at sunrise

 

stilling the air, moisture-packed and pressed close

in the succulent body.

 

to be nourished within the carpel

to drink the rich liquid at night.

 

 

 

 

cumulonimbus

 

 

affixed at the primordial root:

clouds, cotyledons, milk

 

all dense with heaps of oxygenated seed-leafs.

 

the coldest gravity towers overhead

stacking the sky with its cirrus-like head

 

currents of these, immense, radiate through zonal tides.

 

absorption begins, faster than the squall

more night-shining than the streaks of atmosphere

 

clustered deep in the plumules.

 

seedful gales waver across this chasm of breath

snake down the incus anchored in total stillness

 

atmospheric clusters building higher

packing the mesosphere with cloud

 

whorls of blindness punctuating the nub

stems insinuating darkness as marrow thickens

 

loads the stems full of twilight.

 

a parting as the cumulonimbus splits

slicing the protective cup fastened to the wavering planet

 

the bud opening, noctilucent whirls of ink-dark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Molly Stern lives in Brooklyn, NY.  Her poetry has appeared in Witness Magazine, So to Speak and The Mays Anthology.

 

 


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