I wish I could tell you more about the man
bent over the drawing of his daughters
Sofi and Sonia, how like Saint Bartholomew
in Rembrandt’s painting, the man becomes so intent
that his pencil is now another finger,
Years later, my grandfather
reached into his pocket for a handkerchief
and extracted my grandmother like a molar from the grave
There’s no exception to the strangeness
From the preface of Camaraderie of the Marvelous: “I give praise for words that hold me captive and sometimes even dance into song”; to the last line of the last poem: “Percussion is a matter of attunement,” Dianna MacKinnon Henning’s new collection of poems gives us music and dancing; also, drought, hunger, shepherds, bodies of water,…
Who’s astonished by the way
stars smell like communion wafers?
Already the galaxy’s priests
have rounded up the runaways.
MacKinnon Henning, D. (2021). Clover. Psychological Perspectives, 64(2), 276. https://doi.org/10.1080/00332925.2021.1959801 In the foliage of my life, I was honey,something extracted, poured into another,so when you found me there was no resemblanceto my former self. Adept at transformation, I jotted notes on where to retrieve myself. Across fields of forever,someone like me spent days rifling through clover,especially for the…
A boy with a long stick whacks the air.
What demon does he strike?
Amazon.com – Camaraderie of the Marvelous
Down from Bob Ovitt’s place, two sisters linger
at their clothesline to watch as the farmer’s two hundred
eighty-pound body is hoisted into a flatbed and then
driven in a scrawl of dust around the bend.