The Breaking Column
Shira Dentz | Poetry
Copper and moon shifting in doubleness, speeding to rust. The center
of a black hole is prehistoric. What comes out are live birds, mini-
dinosaurs_ louder than a motorized axe. You who lingered in the rose
dusk of early summer now simulate an island evening until bedtime.
Later you’ll write what it feels like to pass from sleep to wakefulness_
the instant one’s mind drops from iron-anonymity into a column along
a shatter of sensation_ a frisson_ like a bird clamping its enormous
of a black hole is prehistoric. What comes out are live birds, mini-
dinosaurs_ louder than a motorized axe. You who lingered in the rose
dusk of early summer now simulate an island evening until bedtime.
Later you’ll write what it feels like to pass from sleep to wakefulness_
the instant one’s mind drops from iron-anonymity into a column along
a shatter of sensation_ a frisson_ like a bird clamping its enormous
sharp-hooked bill.
Shira Dentz is the author of five books including Sisyphusina (Astrophil Press), winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize, and three chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press) and Patternation (Antiphony Press). Her writing appears in Poetry, APR, Iowa Review, Conjunctions, The Baffler, Blackbird, VOLT, New American Writing, Colorado Review, Annulet, Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, Bennington Review, The Rumpus, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series (Poets.org), and NPR. She’s received awards from the Academy of American Poets and Poetry Society of America.