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
—Michelle Taransky
____
first appeared in 88: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and is
forthcoming in the book Barn Burned, Then (Omnidawn 2009)
Barn Burning, It
Found ways for following
Tempest like first ground
Breaking idea of foundation
First till a mule
Because disasters care
For if, asking is no bulwark
That one thought brick but
Breathe it states that missing
Patch of claim flowers
While planting burn
Not the burning
Reason ash is
Saved will figure
As such reconciliation
Tends to waste
Light, it falls in
What interest in fire-
Fed prizes
Calf and their comparisons
State’s birds called
Northern flicker,
Barn swallow
A charm to quiet bundles
Owing a companion
First meadow that alit
Then no plume
Can be its flint
—Michelle Taransky
____
first appeared in 88: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and is
forthcoming in the book Barn Burned, Then (Omnidawn 2009)