Dana Curtis
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The Ghost of Lilly Obscure
With every step I know
my life is fiction, my life
is that tortuous twisted route away
from all that is real. After one idyll
in the apple orchard, I saw it all,
that there is no reality to be captured.
Not by a lens. Not even by
the fabulous. And not by appetite.
We would have walked down into the trees,
or we would have disappeared into the ocean,
or perhaps, we would've rose glowing out of
the mist. But we were burdened
by a vision so dishonest, we had no choice
but to believe in the banquet hall, sumptuous
at the end of every gesture. I feel that
someone might dig me up out of
the staccato lights I chose for myself and
for so many others. Real reel
spilling vermiform across the stained tile floor.
Radium Cleanup
I talked to a cop while a metal egret
smashed its head into the street. He said,
the birds are a net that traps the world. I said,
they're flying out of my fireplace, one by
one-- feathery devices illuminating
what is left. We'll go down into the hole,
the former thoroughfare: glowing water
and a quaint café: sit in the ornate
metal chairs, leaves winding and
sputtering in the tea--- sip and love this
ferocious letter. When the birds arrive
to take us to an undiscovered aerie,
we’ll understand and walk backwards
through chunks of asphalt
into perfection and into
the cemetery we knew was there,
and in knowing, rain
down like feathers.
Mariana Trench IV
Desperate for
a nail file, a meal, a new
leash covered in silver filigree --
it's the memory of
lost stamina walking through
a gray haze of silk curtains, of
the memorial service for what
you once adored, the original
universe inhabited by nothing
living under the water anymore:
my terrible integrity fallen
like plumes. It arches over
my shoulder in a dream of
luxury, passion, complacency --
there is no understanding
for the sharp minds and edges
we want to set the table for. In a
room full of wolves, we become
gentle and hungry. Desperate
for one more reason, for yet
another charcoal: we love
this dust, these molecules; in this
universal facsimile of a murderer
catching snakes with a pale net --
I sprinkled you
down for the pressure
cooker, the steam heat, vanity.
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Dana Curtis’ second full-length collection of poetry, Camera Stellata, was published by CW Books. Her first full-length collection, The Body's Response to Famine, won the Pavement Saw Press Transcontinental Poetry Prize. She has also published seven chapbooks: Book of Disease (in the magazine, The Chapbook), Antiviolet (Pudding House Press), Pyromythology (Finishing Line Press), Twilight Dogs (Pudding House Press), Incubus/Succubus (West Town Press), Dissolve (Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press), and Swingset Enthralled (Talent House Press). Her work has appeared in such publications as Quarterly West, Indiana Review, Colorado Review, and Prairie Schooner. She has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the McKnight Foundation. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Elixir Press and lives in Denver Colorado.